Terror, the prequel - or - Dark Town (by Wes)

They lived in a cheerful state of terror. It seemed natural in childhood. When the wolf in Disney’s Lambert the Sheepish Lion appeared, fiendishly lit in a flash of animated lightning, their hearts nearly stopped. Lambert found the courage to save his adopted sheep family from the ravening beast. The Blauss children did not. They cowered on the living room couch, knees high in a prenatal position. Several evenings later when both parents were out at work or on errands, Wes drew that wolf from memory on a page of notebook paper. Laurie and he hid under a bureau in fright. The picture lay on the floor where they dropped it, scant feet away, but they dared not move from their retreat for fear it would attack. When Mom came home, they crawled out and rushed to the safety of her bewildered presence with vast relief. (They were probably in high school at the time.)
So — let’s imagine. They were — are still — awesome at it.

“There was a dark, dark town, and in the dark, dark town, there was a dark, dark street, and on the dark, dark street, there was a dark, dark house, and in the dark, dark house, there was a dark, dark room…”

Night after night Nenna could be persuaded to repeat this litany in a sepulchral monotone, her children hanging on every dark, dark, frozen like birds before the cobra’s gaze, waiting for the awful moment when, after following her through corners and closets and boxes and every other dark, dark enclosure imaginable, she suddenly bursts out, “THERE WAS A GHOST!” Oh, the shrieks and shivers that ensue, followed by pleas of, “Say it again, Mom. Say it again.”
One night, late for work at Ocean Spray Cranberry Company, she is browbeaten into yet another telling of the awful tale. She says, “There was a dark, dark town, and in the dark, dark town THERE WAS A GHOST!” After everyone recovers from the trauma of this premature ejaculation, they respond with indignation. The unfairness of it all! She had cheated. Say it again and say it right. As Gwendolyn remarks in The Importance of Being Ernest, “The suspense is unbearable. I hope it will last.”

And when the nights come early after daylight savings ends, the six Blauss children and various friends and relatives turn out all the lights upstairs and play Dark Town, a hide-and-seek game in which no one can see anyone in the almost pitch black three bedrooms and a bath, and people hide under beds in bath tubs, and in laundry hampers, waiting either to be caught or to scare the shit out of the person “IT.” Heart failure and hilarity. One night Dad comes up and hides in the bathtub. At an opportune moment he reaches out and grabs the unsuspecting Wes in the dark. Wes is terrified of the dark for years thereafter.

(we are mostly high school & middle school ages)