A/N: written for the @horror prompt

Epping Forest, Essex, UK

"Well, that was some after-show party, wasn't it, Kit?" Marianna asked me with a slight quirk of amusement on her lips.

Our band, Raptor Attack, had performed at a winter solstice festival deep in Epping Forest. We were headed away from both the festival and drunken after-party back into High Beach and the hotel that awaited us there for the night.

I nodded and smiled in turn before I said - "I wasn't expecting the snowball fight afterwards, though. The last time I had one of those, I was still a kid."

Marianna laughed and nodded in agreement. Although we both were in our twenties, we'd still been in school when we'd battled with snowballs amidst our fellow peers and friends. Marianna sighed and continued trudging onwards, her long dark whip of hair an inky contrast against the snow that still fell around us.

"Hey! You guys! Wait for me," Alexander called as his footsteps finally crunched through the snow behind us.

Marianna's twin brother had been relieving himself up against a tree as I'd talked to his sister and had, thus far, not engaged in our subsequent conversation - brief though it had been.

"We were," Marianna shot back tartly and tried to hide a smile. "We were walking slowly."

"Yeah, like Roadrunner slowly," Alexander said and snorted.

Out of the three of us, Alexander had drank the most and as such, his mood had taken a sarcastic turn. Alcohol often did that to him, which was one of the reasons why he didn't imbibe often; he hated what it did to him as much as we did.

By contrast, Marianna and I drank to be polite but took so little at events as to notice much effect. I didn't know Marianna's reasons for not imbibing much, but speaking for myself, I just didn't like the taste much. Fruit juice and smoothies were more my sort of thing; in fact, Marianna herself had introduced me to the latter.

"You caught up. Numb nuts. Stop complaining," I said and rolled my eyes at Marianna when she grinned at my retort.

"Numb nuts, am I? How did you know? It's so cold, my balls have turned blue," Alexander said and hiccuped.

Marianna and I grimaced at one another before I said - "I didn't want to know that, Alex."

"Keep your blue extremities to yourself," Marianna agreed with a sudden laugh.

Alexander made a rude noise and continued trudging ahead; he soon burst into some kind of off-key and equally off-colour sea shanty that he must have picked up from someone at the festival. Marianna sighed and her breath formed a thick cloud in front of her pretty face.

"He'll be back to normal in the morning, Kit," she assured me even though I hadn't even been worried.

I just nodded and continued walking, my hands shoved deeply into the pockets of my jacket. Marianna and I carried on walking in companionable silence, which was broken only by Alexander's brief slurred and half-remembered snippets of song. He broke off his own shanty however when he gave a sharp wordless cry of surprise.

He then pointed with one thickly gloved hand before he said - "Cabin!"

"Come again?" I asked in sudden confusion.

"I thought you said something about a cabin, or was that part of your song?" Marianna asked at the same time.

"Nope. Cabin," Alexander sang out again and pointed with one wildly waving hand.

I didn't need further direction other than Alexander's vague one because I'd seen the cabin for myself. Marianna's dark brows bunched over suddenly confused green eyes.

She snorted in continued confusion before she said - "Well, that wasn't here before."

"Perhaps we missed it in the snow, 'anna," I suggested with a shrug. "I know I wasn't paying much attention to my surroundings."

"Or we came at a slightly different tangent and missed it," Alexander said even as he scooped up a handful of snow.

He fashioned it into a tightly packed ball even as Marianna asked - "Now what are you up to?"

Alexander didn't reply verbally; instead, he let fly with his snowy projectile which thudded against the side of the cabin.

"Alex!" Marianna reprimanded her brother in horror."That's probably someone's house. You've probably just woken them up from a slumber or some such thing."

"Yeah. Think of the children, Alex," I added and barely hid a grin when Marianna started to laugh wildly at my riposte.

"Nah," Alexander said confidently despite our retorts. "There'd be a light on surely. Smoke coming from the chimney. Anyway, look. The thing's a near derelict."

"Could be a hobo in there," I said but that didn't stop Alexander from repeating his earlier motions of making another snowball and flinging it with surprising accuracy despite his drunkenness.

"They ain't bothered if there is anyone in there. They'd come running out shooting at us if they were offended," Alexander said with a disgusted snort.

"Yeah? Do you want that to happen?" Marianna asked before she sighed in disgust.

Alexander had homed in on the cabin and seemed to be striding up towards the front door.

"Now what's he doing?" she asked me in growing frustration.

"I don't know. I don't think I want to know. Sometimes that brother of yours lives by laws of his own," I said and sighed wearily.

Marianna laughed out her sudden agreement even as we made our weary way after the slightly younger Penrose twin. He was busying himself knocking at the cabin's door, yelling and yodelling for someone to answer.

No one did but I could see that Alexander had been correct about one thing - I had been so distracted by his snowball throwing that I had failed to see that the cabin was in fact completely derelict. Great gaping holes had long since appeared in the ceiling and walls and no light or warmth emanated from the interior. It looked as though it had lain abandoned for years and I also noticed that our footprints in the snow were the only marks around the cabin.

"Alex. Stop pounding and yelling for a minute and read that note," Marianna instructed as she pointed towards a scrap of paper pinned against the door.

That note had been partially hidden beneath the snow already clinging to the ramshackle walls, further perpetuated by the splats of Alexander's thrown snowballs. Alexander grumbled as he pulled the note away from the decrepit wood.

"Looks freshly written. Weird," he muttered even as we crowded around.

None of us could read it as the night was too dark to make out much other than the chicken scratch scrawl of whatever had been written there. I pulled out my phone and activated the torch so that we could see - and more importantly, read - a lot better.

"A gift awaits one who enters. If you have been good, you need not fear; if you have been bad, beware the nightmares that appear," I read aloud.

"Wow, that's rather ominous, isn't it?" Alexander asked before he hooted loudly in sudden laughter. "I call bullshit. Probably some kids left it there as a joke. Left over from Halloween or something."

I frowned. I doubted that it had been that at all. Halloween was almost two months in the past and the note looked too freshly written for that. I didn't say anything because I didn't have the chance. Alexander was already pulling his lighter out of his pocket and yelling something about burning the place down and having done with it.

"You can't do that," Marianna said as she knocked the unlit lighter out of her brother's hand and into the snow at our feet.

"Why the hell not? No one's using the place," Alexander said petulantly.

"The fire will spread to the trees around us. It will endanger the animals and also many houses around these parts. I think the people in High Beach and Epping would have a few words to say to you about that. Mostly angry ones and filled with swears," Marianna pointed out and her expression was the most serious I had seen it in a while.

Alexander blew a raspberry at his sister and muttered something about her being a party-pooper and a fun-killer. He noticeably pushed his lighter back into his pocket however once he'd retrieved it from the snowy ground and didn't follow through with his earlier threat.

We remained there with our gazes locked upon the door until I finally asked - "So are we going in there or not?"

"Oh, so now you want to go in there?" Alexander asked. "What's the point, Kit?"

"Well, what's stopping us? Nothing will probably happen anyway," I pointed out and quirked an eyebrow at the male Penrose twin as I gestured towards the note that Alexander still clutched in one hand. "It probably is just a prank note left there as you said. In that case, it's just a spooky old cabin in the woods with nothing inside, no doubt."

"That's right. Unless you're too scared to go inside, Alexa," Marianna said snidely.

"Like you wouldn't go in there," Alexander shot back.

"Watch me," Marianna said firmly before she kicked the door in with one hefty blow of her foot.

I laughed and followed the small frame of my closest friend inside which left Alexander to bring up the rear with a frustrated sigh. We each activated our torches on our phones and shone them around. The cabin itself was far larger than we'd imagined and seemed to comprise about four interconnected rooms. The inside was less ramshackle than the exterior would have had us believe, even though great holes gaped in the roof, admitting smatterings of the snow that still fell outside.

"I'm going in here," Alexander suddenly announced even as he made his way to the nearest door. "Come and get me, suckers."

I frowned even as he made his way through the nearest door. Before Marianna and I could enter however, the door suddenly slammed closed behind Alexander. He gave a few shrieks and wails before he opened the door again and grinned out at us.

"Fooled ya, didn't I?" he asked.

"No. You weren't in there long enough," I said, unimpressed by his antics.

Alexander stuck his tongue out at me, even as Marianna sighed and pushed her way past her brother and further into the room where he stood. I followed and we stood there, looking around at empty walls and equally empty floor.

"What a disappointment, eh?" Alexander asked and clicked his tongue in disgruntlement to further prove his point.

"What did you expect? The bloody Hilton Metropole of Epping Forest?" I asked him with a snort.

"Could have been something exciting in here. A dead body. A skeleton. The Grim Reaper," 

Alexander said with a diffident shrug. "Even Bourne Woods was more exciting than this shit-hole. We saw the Black Shuck there if you remember right."

"Yeah. And you screamed your bloody head off, you big girl's blouse," Marianna said with a laugh.

"Well, you howled like a banshee when you saw Black Annis at that castle in Leicester," Alexander shot back despite his good-natured grin.

I sighed and tried to hide my amusement as the Penrose twins tried to outdo each other with recounts of all of our past adventures. I wandered away and opened another door but found little more than a cupboard beyond that wooden barrier. That too was empty when I checked it. Alexander ended the bragging contest by flouncing through to the next room. Once more, the door banged shut and he began screaming. I startled at the noise yet Marianna shook her head at me.

"Leave him, Kit. He's crying wolf again," she advised with a roll of her eyes at me.

I wasn't entirely convinced by her words, however, no matter how plausible they were; Alexander's screams sounded genuinely frightened that time. Marianna didn't take any notice; instead, she pulled me through into another room entirely where to our surprise, we saw a trapdoor lying open on the floor. Behind us, Alexander's howls and screams grew louder and more frantic.

"'anna, I think we should go and help Alex," I said, unable to bear the extreme noise any longer.

"No, Kit. Leave him. He'll get bored in a minute," Marianna said with a sigh. "Let's see what's beyond this trapdoor."

I wasn't sure that the trapdoor idea was a good one yet Marianna had already descended into the deep dark depths beneath the cabin. I didn't want her going alone, so I descended after her, uncertain of what horrors or difficulties could lie down there.

As it turned out there was nothing there, other than a small trunk sitting closed in the middle of the floor. We were swift to open that trunk. We found that inside was a small pile of gold coins.

"Well, would you Adam and Eve it," Marianna said in surprise.

"I don't think we can keep this gold, 'anna," I said worriedly. "I think we have to give this in to the authorities."

Marianna grunted in disappointment even though she knew that it was the right - and even required - thing to do. We still pocketed the find though in order to do so.

Once we'd ascertained that there was no more treasure to be discovered, we made our way upstairs and found that Alexander still had not come out of the room he'd entered. To our surprise, however, he'd fallen deathly silent.

That time, Marianna seemed more bothered by his silence than she had his earlier screaming; Alexander was only quiet when he was eating or sleeping, after all. She bolted through the door to find that her brother was stretched out unconscious on the floor. He was alone, yet his video function had been activated on his phone; the device itself was lying next to him, the screen glowing softly in the darkness.

"What the hell happened here?" I asked in confusion.

Marianna shook her head at me in silent confused response even as she tried to rouse her brother. It didn't take long before he was awake and cursing vehemently at us.

"Why didn't you come in after me, you bastards?" he asked angrily. "Didn't you hear me screaming?"

"You tried that trick on us before and you were crying wolf that time. What were we supposed to believe the second time?" Marianna asked unimpressed.

Alexander gawked at her sister in such a manner that I realised he hadn't been faking all along.

"Are you telling us you weren't faking, Alex?" I asked suspiciously.

"I wasn't. I wanted your goddamned help and you didn't come, you bastards," Alexander yelled and he seemed on the verge of genuine anger for once.

"Well, you shouldn't have played silly buggers earlier in the evening then," Marianna yelled back at him.

Alexander didn't have an answer for that.

Instead, he stared round the room before he said wearily - "Fine. Let's just get out of here."

"Aren't you going to tell us what happened?" I asked and I surprised even myself at how gentle the question came out.

"Yeah. Not here though, Kit. At the hotel," Alexander said and his voice was the quietest and the most scared I'd ever heard it.

Marianna and I exchanged worried glances yet neither of us had an answer for Alexander. As such, we had no other choice but to trudge our way outside and once we'd attained the fresh air, we continued trudging on to our final destination in silence. Finally, we reached our hotel and soon settled down with some hot chocolate and some snacks we'd purchased from the vending machine.

Alexander didn't tell us what had happened. Instead, he showed us what was going on via the camera on his phone. He didn't seem to remember even switching it on yet he'd managed to catch a variety of scary, leering faces - each one spectral and bony - reaching for him with grabbing skeletal hands. They tore at his clothes, pushed him around and made unsettling, chilling noises. We could hear Alexander's voice on the video, yelling and screaming out in fear. He couldn't seem to get out of the room even though he tried multiple times to charge the door - the spectres were too many and they were too hellbent on tormenting him.

"Are you sure you didn't hear any of this?" Alexander asked after the video file had ended.

"No, we heard you screaming; that was it," I assured him with a baffled frown.

Marianna was swift to give her corroboration before she asked - "What do you think that note on the door meant? Whatever the blasted thing said. I can't remember."

I remembered the note on the door and recited it from memory as best as I could before I finished up with - "Alexander was the one threatening to burn the place down and he threw snowballs. It was Marianna and I who stopped him and went in with no malice. It could be a coincidence or maybe I'm reading too much into events but that's how it seems to me."

"Oh. So it pays to be goody-goodies now, does it?" Alexander asked but there seemed no fire in his belly with that one question.

Instead, he looked almost shamefaced.

"Well, you were drunk. You should have thought better of your actions or not drink so much in the first place. You know what you're like when you get in your cups," Marianna said with a tart frown at her twin brother.

Alexander sighed and I half expected him to come out with a sharp retort yet for once he didn't. He sighed again before he ran both hands through his hair; that one action mussed the dark strands into inky spikes that looked odd when compared to his usually perfectly combed style.

"Okay. So I was acting a bit of an arsehole tonight. Serves me right, eh?" he asked and he didn't seem to be aiming for sarcasm.

Instead, it looked as though he was moving from shame-faced embarrassment into genuine rueful regret.

"Sometimes you do go a bit over the top with things, Alex," I said as kindly as I could. "I hate to break it to you, mate."

Alexander surprisingly laughed at my confession and he nodded.

"Okay. So perhaps you both have a point. Perhaps I should lay off the drink for a while. The ghosts obviously didn't like my bad attitude tonight," he admitted.

"You say that now, Alex, but it'll happen again," Marianna predicted yet her sharp words were softened by an affectionate smile when she looked at her brother.

"Okay. I don't think I have much of an argument for that one. Next time, come to my aid quicker, though, eh?" Alexander shot back with an equally affectionately amused smile.

I sighed before I countered in turn with - "Next time don't play wolf first!"

"Fellas, this isn't helping. So we got into some trouble but we got ourselves out of it. And besides, we got some gold out of it," Marianna said with a grin.

Alexander looked confused and so, Marianna and I showed him the gold as we told him of our own adventures. Alexander looked even more annoyed that he'd missed out on that.

"Even though we won't - or rather can't - keep it, it pays you to not be an arsehole," Marianna said. "Quite literally, in this case."

She indicated the gold and grinned. Alexander couldn't disagree with that - not with the evidence lying in glittering heaps in front of him.

Between us, however, we decided to do something about the gold situation the following morning as we all were tired; it didn't take much time until we decided we needed some sleep.

****

The planned morning excursion turned into an afternoon one as all of us slept in late. We then took the gold coins into the local council offices for them to deal with, left our home addresses in Lincolnshire for them to contact us there, and left.

****

A few months later, we received a call to appear in an Epping newspaper to talk about how we'd found the gold; as such, we travelled down to Essex again to give our statements and have our photos taken. We then were able to procure a copy apiece of the article upon publication for our own enjoyment as it was yet another amusing adventure for us to look back upon.