2011 Halloween Writing Contest

[Christoph]

The 2011 Halloween Horror Contest

“Are you afraid yet? You should be.”

The word ‘horror’ elicits many images in the mind. One might see a dilapidated house on a gloomy night, windows glaring like sunken eyes and horrible things lurking within. Perhaps there appears a leafless forest, gnarled trees casting long shadows under a full moon. One may see vampires, werewolves, and zombies; another imagines masked killers with bloody knives. Do you picture dark witchcraft or science gone wrong? Great inhuman elder gods or the shade of a dead brother?

What is horror, then? The dictionary defines the word as “a painful and intense fear, dread, or dismay.” Horror as a genre is not all about scary things jumping out of cupboards to shout “abooglywoo!” and spook you. Instead, it is defined by a specific aesthetic style and the quest to both portray and elicit the myriad of emotions that define horror. Let me say this again because it bears repeating. Horror fiction need not be ‘scary’ in the blatant or traditional sense. Horror can also disturb the psyche or build an unshakable, subtle sense of dread. The aesthetics of a horror story serve to heighten the sense that ‘something is not quite right.’

The 2011 Footsteps of Ghosts Horror Contest seeks the best works of horror fiction that our talented members can produce. We don’t require blood or gore, spooky ghosts, or anything of that nature for the story -- though we certainly will not discourage those types of themes and ideas. We want stories that frighten and disturb on a variety of levels and in a variety of ways. In short, tap into your darkest imagination. Look into the abyss until the abyss looks back.

The Rules

1.) All entries must be short stories between 2,000 and 6,000 words in length.

2.) All entries must be within Horror genre as defined above.

3.) Christoph (me) and Marcus (and possibly one or two other staff members to be announced) will judge these entries using the new FoG Rubric. We welcome mature questions and comments regarding the results, but all rulings are final.

4.) All entries must be posted in this thread by Friday, October 14th.

5.)The staff will reveal the results on the night before Halloween: Sunday, October 30th. The winner will receive a special contest winner badge for his/her signature and immortal placement for their story in the FoG Hall of Fame.

Good luck!

---

Entries

• Fate Foretold's "One Grave"
  
• Lenny V's "The Vision of Sara Lyle"
  
• Ragter the junior greeter's "Sin"
  
• Ryona Noel's "Let's Make a Movie"
  
• Ten's "From the Mirror"
  
• Wildsword's "The Hat Man"

[Lord Revan]

I am looking forward to reading and helping Christoph judge these entries. Halloween is my favorite holiday so any stories that involve it always interest me. Good luck to all the possible entrants into the contest!

[Dax]

I am just going to Ditto Marcus here. xD

Except I am going to add that, if someone is able to scare me in their writing, they will get a cookie.

A really, really, really big cookie.


Good luck to all who participate!

[Sólrökr]

I might consider it, but horror is not my affinity.

[Ana Kingsley]

Question!
If I wanted to base my story around some sort of creepypasta, would that be allowed?

[Christoph]

Except I am going to add that, if someone is able to scare me in their writing, they will get a cookie.

A really, really, really big cookie.

Cookies are pretty cool, though to reiterate: good horror stories don't necessarily have to scare or spook the reader in a direct sense.

Ana: You're writing a story about scary linguine, then? But in all seriousness, it would depend on what exactly you intended. Your entry needs to be your own work. Beyond that, there's nothing wrong with drawing some inspiration from other sources.

[Dax]

Except I am going to add that, if someone is able to scare me in their writing, they will get a cookie.

A really, really, really big cookie.

Cookies are pretty cool, though to reiterate: good horror stories don't necessarily have to scare or spook the reader in a direct sense.

Yah, that's true. But to truly scare someone with their writing is a hard thing to do, especially for those readers who aren't scared easily.

[Ana Kingsley]

Ana: You're writing a story about scary linguine, then? But in all seriousness, it would depend on what exactly you intended. Your entry needs to be your own work. Beyond that, there's nothing wrong with drawing some inspiration from other sources.

Oh yes. Gotta love that scary linguine. xD
No, I mean like, could I base it around Slenderman or The Rake or Candle Cove or something like that?
Or does it have to be completely original?
I guess thats what I was really trying to ask.
*assumes everyone knows what a creepypasta is*

[Dreamless Days]

Except I am going to add that, if someone is able to scare me in their writing, they will get a cookie.

The only creepypasta I know of is The Haunted Majora's Mask. That was ONE SPOOKY STORY.

But yeah, I might give this a shot. Odds are it might not be generic scary though, prolly something along the lines of "Mindscrew Scary".

[striDer]

Can I write a story about you, going into the bathroom by accident and finding your naked grandpa taking a bath with his socks still on?

Not...not that that ever happened to me...

...

v.v it still haunts me at night...

[Christoph]

Ana: You can draw inspiration from such stories, so long as the final product and idea is sufficiently yours.

[Wildsword]

I've been meaning to write a few more horror stories, might a good place to start....

excited to read what other people put down too. Always interesting to see what eerie and disturbing subject matters people can put on paper or screen.

I extend my best wishes of luck and thanks to all who participate, thank you for giving us a taste of the dark road less traveled.

[Raspeyer]

I intend to join in on this. I think the rubric is well-suited for judging writing contests as opposed to other things.

Also shouldn't they be anonymous entries? Why not send the entries to you and have the OP post them all up?

[Guest]

Why would they be anonymous? I could understand if the voting was open to all of FoG, making the entries anonymous, but Christoph and Marcus are going to be the judges. So, whether you send the entries to the OP or not...they'll know who they got the message from. And when you win, you'll be revealed at the end anyways... but it won't matter because nobody else is voting on them. >_> I mean, right?

Oh, and also, I intend to enter as well. ^^;

[Raspeyer]

Oh that's right. Haha, I'm so use to public voting contests. Well, then I hope my little story will bring a wonderful chill to your vertebral columns.

[Lost Dreams]

Good thinking holly, but since there are only 2 judges it should be alright. I think I want to enter this contest. Horror is something I think I'm quite good at. >> I have stories going though my head all the time.
I've read some good short stories that have actually made me close my blinds and turn on all the lights. Normally it's zombies. But no. That time it was the one about the child who ate himself to death.

It was really scary. It was about this baby who not long after he grew teeth started chewing on his lip, he chewed and chewed until his lips were raw and bloody. The parents took him into the doctor and they told them to just give him a pacifier.
The chewing did not shop. The child continued to chew until there was a gaping hole in his face where his lips were. The child's need to chew still was not satisfied. The parents woke up one morning to find their child covered in blood. He had ate his hands (or something like that) and died. It was a lot scarier than I just wrote it. Anyone else ever read it?

So anyways. yeah. I'm in.

[Nihilisil]

Hmm, I may well hop on this ride. I've never really attempted horror, so it'll be an interesting experiment. I've already got a few ideas, primarily from an old creative writing course I took my senior year in college. Looking forward to seeing others' stories as well.

[Blade Barrier]

Oh that's right. Haha, I'm so use to public voting contests. Well, then I hope my little story will bring a wonderful chill to your vertebral columns.

You think the Rubic is best suited for this contest, yet you're use to public voting?

What is this I don't even-




Anyway, I notice that the topic explaining the Rubic is locked, but I have questions about it. Do I submit my questions here or must I pm someone? Or did I overlook another topic that's being used to elaborate on it?

[Gadreille]

FOG Rubric Feedback

I think this is what you were looking for. It was originally part of the Rubric thread but spliced due to...lots of questions

[Fate Flyer]

Well, here is my entry. It's not your typical story in the method it is told, but I had fun writing it, and it just all flowed out all at once. I was even able to finish it in one sitting. I had actually started a story before this, written in your typical story format, but I just was not feeling it. I'm not sure if this will really raise the hairs on the backs of anyone's necks, but I hope you at least enjoy it. This is the product of the inspiration from TV shows such as The Haunted (on Animal Planet) or Paranormal Witness (on SyFy).

---

One Grave

A middle-aged couple sits together on sufficiently comfortable chairs in a dark room with a single mood light shining down on them from above. The woman, a bit larger in figure than the man but wearing a flattering sundress, fiddles rather nervously with her light blonde hair while her husband, dressed in plaid and balding, sits back with his legs crossed staring ahead. A TV studio camera is pointed at them, and the director instructs them on what to do, telling them to relax and to just retell their tale from beginning to end. He then starts to count down from five. Four. Three. Two. One.

ANNE:
Hi, I’m Anne Reed, and this is my husband of twenty two years, Ian Reed. The two of us never in our lives believed in ghosts or the paranormal or anything supernatural like that…at least not until we moved into our new home.

IAN:
Our home turned us into believers. (Laughs.)

ANNE:
It all started back in 2005. My husband and I were in a good place financially. He had just gotten a raise the previous year, and I was stable in my position as an at-home accountant. Our daughter Tara was sixteen at the time, and our son Ty was eighteen. After he graduated from high school and moved out into an apartment, we decided it was a good time to move. It was much more quiet in the house without Ty there anymore, and I needed a new project to keep me busy when I wasn’t working.

IAN:
I wasn’t too wild about the idea of moving at first, since that’s a lot of work, and I was stuck in the office until six each day, so I knew I couldn’t help pack much except on the weekends. Eventually she talked me into it though once she got to showing me some of the homes we could now afford. I let Anne and the realtor handle the house hunting, and I just gave them my two cents about the properties when I saw them.

ANNE:
A lot of the times Ian was too swamped with work even on the weekends, so it would just be Tara and I who’d go take a look at the homes together and then come back with some photos for him to see. I remember having a few houses that I liked and could see us living in, but there was one in particular that stood out the most to me when I saw it. It was just perfect for us. It was out in the country and far enough away for us to have our privacy –

IAN:
Which we like.

ANNE:
– and it was the perfect size and with all the right features. It was only a few miles from our previous house, so we’d still be in the same area. I just felt like I was coming home when Tara and I pulled into the driveway to meet our realtor there. It was a little old and needed some updating and elbow grease, or “love” as I called it, but it just had so much character and personality to it, like it had a story of its own. I grew up on a farm, and I don’t really care for modern homes or contemporary style. I like the traditional feel, and that’s exactly what this home had.

Tara immediately seemed to take a liking to it too. She said as soon as we got in through the door and walked past the threshold that she felt a connection to it. She turned to me, and she said, “Mom, this is our house. This is the one.”

IAN:
Anne had showed me some pictures that night of the house and told me how much they liked it. It was a lot of house and a lot of land for the price, and I just felt like if we didn’t make an offer as soon as possible, it was going to be taken from us. It was just too good to pass up, so I told Anne to go ahead with it. We got the house. The owners didn’t even come back with another offer. It was ours just like that. We were thrilled.

ANNE:
We were a little surprised at first that it was so easy, but you know, we figured the owners were satisfied with our offer and were eager to move to their new place, so we didn’t think much on it. We started moving in right after. It was easy piling all our stuff into the house, but it was putting it away and organizing it that was time consuming.

IAN:
I was in charge of minor fixes or improvements while Anne and Tara situated everything. Some things here and there needed replacing. There was quite a bit of wallpaper in the bathrooms and kitchen, and a lot of it was already peeling, so I had been in the process of removing that when a strange sensation overcame me. I felt like I was being watched. It got really cold, and all my hairs stood on end. I figured it was just a draft. It was an older home, and there was still a lot of work to be done, but Anne just had this idea in her head that this place was going to be perfect once we made it all our own. “It just needs a little love,” she’d tell me. I believed her, and I thought we could really bring this older house back to life and that it’d be our dream home. It seemed possible. But all the while I just always had this strange feeling in my gut, ever since the first time I saw the place. I couldn’t explain it though, and I never mentioned it to Anne, since I didn’t want to ruin her dream. This was her project, and I didn’t want to take that away from her.

ANNE:
I don’t remember ever feeling anything unusual in the house at first. If Tara did, she never told me about it. She and I were both unpacking boxes though and were in the basement, where we stored a lot of our things. It was the middle of the afternoon, but it was pitch dark down there. It’s always dark down there, since the windows are so old and dirty. There’s only one light down there, and it’s one of those with just a bulb where you have to pull the cord to turn it on or off. I was going through some things and was really concentrated on what I was doing. Suddenly, Tara jumped up and let out a little surprised scream and turned to me. She said, “Mom, mom, was that you?” I said, “Was what me?” She just looked at me for a moment and frowned. It was like she didn’t want to tell me. I was growing frustrated, and I kept asking her what she meant. She just said, “I don’t know,” and told me it was probably just a spider or a bug. I remember being frustrated that she wasn’t telling me what happened, but I wasn’t going to pester her. I just moved on with what I was doing and put it out of my mind.

That was the first time anything strange happened.

IAN:
The first of many times.

In another room equally small and dark sits two twenty-something-year-olds, a girl and guy – Tara and Ty. Tara is sitting with both her hands folded neatly on her lap, her short blonde hair partly covering her reluctant eyes. Ty’s brows are knitted together, and he looks weary to speak. They seem uneasy, scared, as if speaking about past incidents may revive them. Ty sighs heavily and looks up at the camera facing them. The director tells them, “Whenever you’re ready.”

TY:
I didn’t move with my parents and sister when they left. I had already gotten an apartment with my friend. I was just going to community college, but I was eighteen and wanted a place of my own. It was a waste of money, since my parents lived so close to college, but no kid wants to live with their parents once they’re able to move out. I didn’t really hear anything about the house other than it seemed perfect and that everyone really loved it. It thought everything was great for my family, and I was actually kind of envious, since I wished I had gotten to live in it before I moved. No one told me anything strange about it, so I just assumed they were all happy.

TARA:
I loved the house when I saw it. I just looked up at those old windows with the shutters that were falling off and the chipped paint and pointed attic overlooking the driveway and thought, “This is place is amazing.” I loved how old it was. It just had all this history to it, as if it had been fully lived in, like a good pair of shoes that have been worn in to the point of being extremely comfortable. It felt so warm and inviting. At first.

It was incredible how dramatically the atmosphere changed after we had moved in. It was like, once the house roped us in, it started to show its true colors. I started hearing all kinds of strange sounds, like creaking floor boards, banging pipes, unexplained ticking or whistling. I just blew it off as the wind or from it being an old house. It was an adjustment, but I had been swept up in this vision that my mom and I would work together on it and make it fabulous. It was going to be a great mother-daughter bonding experience. I was just sixteen, and my brother had moved out, so it was a strange time. I had to get used to these changes, and all I wanted was to be safe and comfortable and happy. I felt like there was only a couple more years until I move out too, so I wanted to have this thing that my mom and I could do together and finish before I too moved on with my life.

One night after I had finished dinner, I was watching TV in the living room. Mom and dad were still eating, so I could hear them talking softly in the kitchen and the sound of their silverware on their plates. It seemed like an ordinary night. Then, all of a sudden, the channels started to change on their own. I thought, “Great, the satellite’s acting up.” Then the TV turned off completely. I clicked it back on, and it was back on the channel I had been watching. I sat back down and continued to watch my show, and a couple minutes later, the TV turned off again. But this time it turned on all by itself. I had no idea what was happening. I remember yelling for my dad, since I thought he could fix it, but even though I could hear them, he apparently didn’t hear me, since he never responded. I decided to try unplugging the TV and plugging it into a different outlet. As soon as I unplugged it though, it turned on again, completely out of the plug. I felt my entire body go stiff and my heart stop. I knew something was wrong. I just got up and ran out of the room and up the stairs to my bedroom.

IAN:
I remember finding the TV unplugged that night, and I’ve since found out that it was Tara, but at the time I thought, “This is a bit strange.”

I was getting ready for work one morning, and I had just fed our dog Rocky. Rocky was a Labrador Retriever. My wife and I got him a few years after we had Tara. Rocky always scarfed down his food when we put it in his bowl, but that morning he just kept looking up at me, like he wasn’t hungry. I thought it was odd, but I just forgot about it and left for work. When I came home that night, my wife was in tears, telling me Rocky hasn’t eaten anything all day, that his food from that morning was still in his food bowl that night. I told her it was probably nothing and that we shouldn’t worry too much about it. She took Rocky to the vet the next day.

ANNE:
The veterinarian said Rocky was completely fine. There wasn’t anything she could find that could be wrong with him. He was healthy, so she thought that maybe the move had shaken him up a bit and that that was common for a lot of pets. She said to just keep an eye on him and try and keep him company when it was his feeding time. I was so relieved to find out everything was okay and that it wasn’t anything serious. I felt kind of foolish for jumping to conclusions, but I loved that dog.

Well, a few days passed, and Rocky’s behavior got even more peculiar. He would only eat in the afternoon and only small amounts, and he rarely seemed playful anymore. I’d always take him on walks every other day, but he got very persistent in wanting to stay out longer, and it got to the point where he was begging me to go on a walk everyday, sometimes scratching at the front door or barking at me until I got his leash. I figured maybe he’s just bored and he’s getting old. He would stand and bark at the basement door for hours on end throughout the day too. He’d sometimes just stare and stare at absolutely nothing and not move. Eventually, Rocky started sleeping in bed with my husband and I, which he never used to do. He simply refused to sleep on the floor.

IAN:
I was getting fed up with it, because there was this huge dog in bed with me all the time. I couldn’t sleep. There just wasn’t enough room, and Rocky was constantly on edge. I’d feel up jolt up, completely alert and totally focused. Then he’d start growling. It was a low, subtle growl, and he’d always be staring at the door. I thought, “Wow, this dog’s gone mad.” It just got to the point where I had to lock Rocky outside our bedroom at night and close the door on him.

ANNE:
He hated that. He’d sit there for awhile and howl or scratch at the door until finally he got too tired. I felt awful about it, but there wasn’t anything else we could think to do. He had never been like this before.

I remember one morning not long after we started sleeping with our door shut at night that I woke to the entire house being a mess. It was completely and totally in a state of chaos, as if someone broke in when we were sleeping and just threw everything everywhere. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought to myself, “How could Rocky do this?” I knew dogs can do a lot of damage when they’re upset, but Rocky had never shown such bad behavior before, not even when he was a puppy. I was so confused and so furious with him. I was just in tears trying to clean everything up.

IAN:
The kitchen was the worst. The cabinets were open, and food was all over the counters and floor. Some of the contents from the fridge had even been spilt or left out, and we just couldn’t figure out how Rocky had managed to open up the fridge. There were paw prints around the house though from him walking through the ketchup and pudding and sauce that was smeared all over the kitchen, so we knew it had to be him. I felt horrible leaving my wife there to clean it all up by herself, but I had to get to my job.

TARA:
The day our house was torn apart by Rocky, I remember my mom just being so frustrated and upset. I tried to help out as much as I could, and I just felt like Rocky had betrayed us. He was getting so needy and acting up so much. (Sniffs.) I remember just feeling like I had the dog from Hell and that he was turning into a nightmare. I had grown up with Rocky, and I loved him so much. I couldn’t understand it.

ANNE:
The last straw came when Rocky chewed up our furniture. There were just bite marks everywhere, and we figured he must have been doing all this over night. I had to start putting Rocky outside in his kennel at nighttime. He was just becoming too destructive and costing us so much money. I was already busy trying to get the house in order, and I didn’t want to worry about all this extra work that I shouldn’t have to do.

Eventually, Rocky started losing his fur. It started slow, and I just thought nothing of it, but then just overnight, he lost it all. I woke up to find him huddled in his kennel, completely naked. I thought, “Oh my God, he’s sick. He’s dying.” I took him to the vet again, and she gave us some medication for him, but she told me that Rocky just seemed like a completely different dog to her than he had been. He was so much more self conscious and nervous. She thought the move and then the sudden isolation at night, first from our bedroom and then from our house completely might be causing him to feel neglected. I just felt like a horrible dog owner, and I couldn’t figure out how to make this work.

I talked Ian in to letting Rocky stay inside at night again. He agreed, but he set up a couple security cameras around the house to keep an eye on our dog. The following morning, the house was just as it had been before when Rocky would stay inside – a complete disaster. We turned to the security tapes, and we couldn’t believe what we saw.

IAN:
We couldn’t understand it. We just played it again and again in disbelief. There was Rocky, barking and growling at something in the living room facing the basement door, staring at nothing. Then, all of a sudden, some type of mist formed out of nowhere, and the end table rose up in midair and flew at him, like someone had picked it up and thrown it at our dog. Rocky ran out of the room and huddled under the dining table, and then we watched all horror break lose. Things started flying around the house. Drawers and doors would open on their own. Chairs would stack up on top of one another and then, in the blink of an eye, fly back to their original positions, as if frames had been removed from the video. It was… (Rubs eyes.) …unbelievable.

ANNE:
We still have never told the kids about that video.

TARA:
When Rocky started getting sick and losing all his hair, Ty came home frequently to visit and see the dog. You could tell he was upset. He was angry at our parents for not catering more to Rocky’s needs, since he was an older dog. I was at a loss as to what to do for Rocky. I didn’t really understand why he was making such a mess of things at night, and I never once heard him doing any of it.

While all this was going on, I was experiencing some things of my own. I didn’t want to bring them up to my parents, because I didn’t think they’d believe me, and I wasn’t really sure I believed in any of it myself.

When I was alone in my bedroom, sometimes I’d hear laughter from a child. It sounded like a little boy, but kind of off in the distance or somewhat echoy. One day while I was working on homework, I felt my computer chair get pushed. I thought someone was playing a joke on me or that maybe Ty had come home that night and was surprising me, but I turned around and no one was there. It got really cold, just like it had when we had first moved in and I was in the basement with my mom and felt someone grab my arm. I told my mom it was just a bug, but I knew what I felt. Both times it got freezing cold, as if all the energy and all the heat and been sucked out of the room. I soon learned that whenever it got cold, something was going to happen. Then, out of nowhere appeared this little kid. He couldn’t be much older than seven or eight. He just looked over at me from the corner of my bedroom and smiled. He was different looking though, semi-transparent, and kind of grayish. I just remember getting stiff and being unable to move. And then, just like that, he was gone.

TY:
I was home the night Rocky died. He had gotten really weak and sick, and the vet couldn’t figure out why. He otherwise seemed healthy and normal. I was pretty upset, since I had kind of grown up with that dog. He just passed away in my arms, so peacefully. I just remember crying and crying that night when I was alone in the guest bedroom that I always slept in there. (Sighs.) I was thankful I was at least there for him.

ANNE:
After Rocky passed away, we buried him in our backyard and marked his gravesite with a little rock that Ian etched his name into. It was a sad day. Despite Rocky’s behavior in the end, he was a good dog, and I knew he was only acting up because of something we couldn’t see or explain. After we learned the truth from that video, Ian and I just dropped it. We didn’t bring it up or mention it. I guess we just thought if we avoided saying it out loud, then that wouldn’t make it real…that we couldn’t possibly have a haunted house.

IAN:
I was up one night working late at my computer in our office. I got this weird feeling suddenly that I couldn’t dismiss, so I just stood up and said in a stern voice, “Leave me alone.” I didn’t really know if anything that could hear was there or not, but then not a moment later I heard a clear and audible whisper from behind me in my ear say, “GET OUT.” It was so crisp and so clear, immediately I had full body goosebumps, and all the hairs on my body were standing up. I slowly and as calmly as I could walked out of the office, shut the door behind me, and went to bed without another word. Whatever that was, whatever was there, I didn’t want to face it. I didn’t want to deal with it.

ANNE:
It was about a month after Rocky died that I decided to get the family a cat. I had had lots of cats growing up out on the farm, and I knew Ian wasn’t much of a cat person, but I thought once I brought her home, he’d warm up to her. I surprised him and Tara that evening, and Tara was of course thrilled. She loved animals. Ian wasn’t so excited at first, but over time he slowly started to love her too. Missy, as I called her, was a sweet kitten. She was so playful and calm for a baby. I knew we couldn’t really replace the hole Rocky left in our hearts, but Missy was there to at least keep me company when I was alone in the daytime while I worked.

Since I make my own hours working at home, I was able to stop what I was doing and start up one of my many projects on the house whenever I felt like it. It was nice being able to hop between both my job and work on the house. When Tara would come home from school around 3:30, the two of us would work on something together until Ian came home. It was nice for awhile. Then everything fell apart.

TARA:
Soon, I noticed Missy started losing her hair, just like Rocky did. I told my mom, and she was just heartbroken. I knew she felt like the animals having gotten sick was somehow her fault. I was worried for them and for us. I knew something was in the house, and I thought, “If it can do this to the animals, what is it capable of doing to us?” Missy only lived for about two months, then she too got sick and died, just like that. My mom doesn’t like talking about it. I was starting to feel threatened in my own home. More and more unexplained things started happening, like lights turning on and off, footsteps coming from the attic or basement, things going missing and then reappearing in places you never would have put them, and just an assortment of things that were out of the ordinary. There was one occasion when I was eating dinner with my parents and we all heard what sounded like a gun being shot right in our own home. It was so loud, it made all of us jump out of our chairs.

TY:
After a year, my lease was up at my apartment, and my roommate wanted to move in with his girlfriend, so I couldn’t stay there by myself, since I couldn’t afford it, and no one else I knew could move in. I was forced to live with my parents again while I worked on getting my Associate’s Degree. The day I moved back was pretty surreal. Going to that house out in the country was like being sentenced to some dark fate. I just remember pulling into the driveway and it raining heavily outside. It was like a corny horror film with the lightning striking from somewhere off in the distance behind the house. Everything I had fit into my van, so I was able to get everything there in just one trip. I walked inside, and I just had this overwhelming feeling like I wasn’t welcome. I had had strange feelings in the house before and had had a lot of frightening and realistic nightmares when I visited, but I never felt such an oppressive and demanding feeling before.

I had just finished getting my room together, claiming the only guest bedroom they had, when I was attacked. That’s the only way I can describe it. Suddenly, things started flying off their shelves, my bed started to shake, and a baseball I had sitting in my glove shot out at me and hit me straight in the mouth. It broke my jaw. I had to go to the emergency room. Some welcome back.

ANNE:
I believed Ty when he told me the ball flew into his face by itself. I knew he wasn’t making it up, not after that video I had seen from the hidden camera Ian set up back when Rocky was alive. As time went on, everything just kept building and building, and it just felt as if it was all going to pop at any moment. I was terrified for my family and for myself. I was angry and feeling helpless. I decided I needed answers.

I went to the library’s records on the history of our home and discovered that everyone that has ever lived there – and I mean everyone – has had horrible bad luck, be it health issues, sudden and dramatic money problems, or even death or suicide. The owners we bought the house from had become quite ill, and the woman had even been diagnosed with cancer. I also discovered that the original owners, the ones who built the house in the 1800’s, had had a son. He died at the age of seven. Apparently he had been murdered by the father after he discovered his son had brutally and sadistically killed the family pets. After the dad had taken his son’s life, he then took his own with a shotgun. Suddenly, everything was beginning to make sense.

TY:
I knew a guy that was into paranormal investigating like they do on TV. I didn’t really take it all that seriously until all these things were going on in my parents’ new home. I thought maybe we could have him and his team come in and investigate. I told my mom about it, and she seemed interested, but my dad was kind of hesitant. I don’t think he wanted to know what it was that was in their house. He just wanted to ignore it all and pretend it didn’t exist. I felt like if we kept ignoring it, it was going to continue with its activity and that maybe someone else was going to get hurt next time.

The team came in one weekend and set up all their equipment. They had a few stationary cameras, some voice recorders, EMF readers, thermometers, and some other gadgets that they were going to try. We all had to leave them alone in the house so that we wouldn’t interfere with their investigation, so we just went out for a late dinner while they worked. When we came back a couple hours later, the whole team was outside on our lawn. We thought they’d be there for a few hours and that we’d just have to wait outside in the car until they were done, but they looked like that had already packed everything up and were getting ready to leave.

I walked up to the guy I knew and asked him why they were leaving so soon. He just looked at me and said, “We don’t want to mess with this,” and he handed me his digital recorder to borrow so that I could play it back and listen to whatever it was they had recorded.

I couldn’t wait, and neither could my parents or sister, so we all just sat around the dining room table and listened to it. The sounds that came out of that thing… They were otherworldly. We heard screams, cries, chanting, singing, sobbing. And this was all from the recorder which had been left alone in the basement. When the team went to retrieve it before they left, we all clearly heard a man yell to them, “GO AWAY.”

I don’t know if it was just from everything that had been happening or the adrenaline of hearing that voice recorder, but we all decided it was time to figure out what was really going on. The activity was pretty widespread throughout the house, but it seemed most concentrated in the basement. That’s where the first experience took place, and that’s also the only area of the house that the animals wouldn’t ever go. It didn’t matter if you had a treat in your hand or was calling their name. They just refused. So, we went to the basement. Together, as a family.

ANNE:
I was scared to bring my kids down there with us. I thought it might be dangerous, but I knew they wanted to go and be a part of this. We were stronger together. I let Ian take the lead, and we just went on down into the darkness. Ian had to find his way over to the light to pull the cord, but when he did, nothing happened. I had some flashlights sitting on the old desk down there, so I felt my way over to them and quickly switched mine on. It was so cold, once there was some light, we all noticed we could see our breath. We didn’t know what we were searching for. We just knew whatever it was, it was down there.

IAN:
I was scared to death, more scared than I’ve ever been in my life, but I didn’t want my family to know that. I had to be strong for them. We just scoured the basement, dusting off our boxes and old things we had stored down there. It was actually Tara who found it.

TARA:
There was a hidden door in the floorboards below a rug. It hadn’t ever been discovered by any of us when we moved in. It was pretty well concealed, even without the rug over it. I called everyone over, and we just kind of looked at one another and then at the door. Ty was the one to grab the handle and pull it up.

TY:
We never could have prepared ourselves for that. Down in the hole, buried in the dirt below our house inside that hidden door in the floor were bones – human bones and skulls and animal bones, all mixed in there together. We had discovered some of previous residents and the original owners of the house. The police identified the father that had shot himself in the head, his skull having a hole through it, alongside the son who had been strangled to death. There were also dogs and cats in there, the animals the boy had killed. It was…a horrible scene.

ANNE:
We had all the skeletons removed and buried respectfully. We felt they were finally put to rest. They had problems in their lives, and they carried their troubles over to the afterlife and onto all those who lived on the property. We had the house blessed by a priest, and afterward, the air just seemed to lighten. It was literally easier to breathe, and we all felt better.

IAN:
Occasionally, we’ll still have the odd thing disappear and reappear in odd places, or we’ll hear the sound of footsteps, or there’ll be a door that opens on its own. But the violent activity, the dark atmosphere, the feeling of being watched and the cold spots have all gone. I love our house, regardless of everything it’s put us through. I know my wife made a good choice when she chose this one. It’s a beautiful home now, and it’s entirely ours.

ANNE:
It just needed some love.

[Christoph]

Thank you for entering, Fate. I look forward to reading it. Everyone else: remember the deadline looms ever closer. All entries must be posted by 11:59 PM EST on October 14th. So, make those chilling finishing touches and get them posted.

[Ragter the junior greeter]

Huh, the fourteenth. I was thinking of entering...and still will! 8 days is plenty of time for me.

[Lord Revan]

Thanks for the entry Fate. I look forward to reading it as well.

Please everyone who plans on entering, get us your entries by the 14th.

Good luck to everyone!!

[Bird of Hermes]

Thank you for your entry, Fate. I can't wait to read it!

[Gadreille]

I guess I'll put something up, just to encourage members to go through with theirs. Question: may I include a photo, or a link to a photo, in my entry?

[Christoph]

You can if you feel so inclined, but the judges won't take it into consideration when reviewing. It wouldn't impact your score, but you could include a picture for the benefit of other readers if you want.

[Fate Flyer]

I'm REALLY looking forward to reading everyone's entries. I love scary stories so much. Kudos to all those who enter too, since (as I have discovered) it can be very hard to write something spine-tingling.

[Lenny V]

Light a candle at sundown, pour a glass of your favorite libation and savor the words of:

THE VISION OF SARA LYLE

In the desolate countryside many kilometers to the north of London, on the outskirts of the town of Hobbs, two young lads walked along a dirt road lined by aged, gnarled oaks, encompassed by swamp, in the shadows of towering cliffs. As they approached an adjoining trail leading off into dense thickets, the older lad veered off, while the smaller boy hesitated.

“Mum doesn’t want us to go through there,” the younger lad whispered fearfully, looking up at his older brother. “She wants us to stay on Gully Road... you know that. She’ll be spanking mad!”

“Stop being a sissy-boy.”

“Don’t call me that!”

“Well, Michael, that’s what you are. If you want to follow me, fine. If not, take the long, sissy-boy way home.” The taller lad turned and disappeared down the trail, leaving his little brother standing beneath the dark canopy of interwoven branches of the great oaks rimming the road. It always seemed darker beneath those trees, and no more so than the present, now that the sun had dropped behind the hills.

Michael looked up at the tall cliffs, imposing, dark palisades extending to the darkening sky, and shivered. “You’re not supposed to leave me, Colin!” he shouted.

There was no answer, beside the faded echo of his voice from the distant, rocky bluffs.

He wanted to follow his brother, but was too scared. Nearly in tears, he chose to stay on Gully Road, and started running fast as his seven year old legs would carry him.

Colin had made his way deep into the brush. Finally, he heard footsteps coming up quickly behind him. Running footfalls crunching leaves. Sissy-boy is getting braver, he thought, and then realized the steps were much too heavy for little Michael. Alarmed, he started to turn, but a large arm hooked him around his throat from behind, choking his cry before it could reach his lips. He tried to struggle, but was yanked off the ground, helpless against the strength of his attacker. As the vise tightened around his thin neck, I’M DYING! was the last living thought he ever had.

And so went the first of many disappearances of a child from the village of Hobbs. Throughout northern England, it was whispered that a modern day curse had enveloped the village, as one child per year was taken after Colin had vanished. Despite vigilant parents and guardians hovering over the children, an opportunity would always arise, and a child would disappear. The frantic villagers would mount an ineffectual search, with the same result: Failure to locate a body.

On three occasions, the trail would lead to the quicksand bog beside Gully Road. Had the child fallen in? Pushed in? Did the trail really end there, or was that simply a ruse?

Even the hounds had failed. Once, the dogs had led searchers to the local ne’er do well’s house. Little did the group know, that the killer had deliberately baited the property with the missing child’s clothing, then returned to join their ranks prior to the search commencement. The murderer, a pillar of the community, helped incite the search party to mob-induced violence.

During the brutal interrogation, the man was beaten severely and died. Still, the missing child was never found. And then, the next year, another child disappeared.

Twelve long years had come and gone since Colin had disappeared. During that time, eleven others, nine boys and two girls, had simply vanished without a trace.

It was true that the bodies were near the quicksand bog. But the killer, a lifelong resident of this area, had, as a child years before, discovered a narrow, invisible trail of igneous bedrock lying just beneath the quicksand surface, leading to a peat bog, an excellent medium for burying and preserving bodies. No one else knew of this trail.

So it was there, in the desolate, God-forsaken mire below the great cliffs that the murderer buried the small corpses, under cover of darkness, where the swamp and night melded and reigned supreme.
~
During that dreadful span, there’d come a time of year when the mountain mists would cascade down the palisades in a spiraling fleece, blanketing the unmarked cemetery in an opaque fog. From there, the children’s spirits would arise to perform their macabre dance, to the beating pulse of the black night; a caliginous pulse real as a living heart, to this they would move in a whirling circle above the ground, the dance of death, holding hands, spinning faster and faster to the insidious throb of the earthly hell that was theirs.

The mist was so thick, that none alive had ever seen the ghostly prance, but the cacophony of restless souls, forever damned in earthbound perdition while awaiting justice done in their name, was said to have been heard from Gully Road and the swamp beyond.

It was during the fortnight leading to All Hallows Eve, when the spirits would converge in earnest, arising at dusk. With their communal lament consummating All Saints Day, they’d call for the soul of the one who had forced them all into their present and final state. The children would clasp hands, floating, circling their unmarked and ungraced graves, free from another year of hellish limbo, free for the one night when the dead may return to the world of the living.

Now, through the ethers, the spirits sensed an unprecedented opportunity. A convergence of the fates was at hand, setting to conspire for them. A living, young child, one with the ability to see them, to hear them, to allow them access to the world of their killer, would soon be in their midst.
~
Sara Lyle hadn’t always been different than the other children. On the contrary, she’d always been a beautiful little girl, with the brightest smile, and prettiest bows adorning her curly, auburn locks. With her little girl friends, she would play tea party, and they’d dress up their dolls and kittens in miniature Victorian gowns, then parade through her garden, alongside the pool filled with emerald-hued water, where orange, fantailed fish swam slowly amongst water hyacinths and pond lilies.

After the complications that arose during Sara’s birth, her mother had become a sickly, bedridden young woman, so Sara was raised by a nanny, and of course, her father, Sir Franklin Lyle. When her mother had died when she was a toddler, Sara was too young to understand the reality of death, so she grew up believing that her mother was in heaven, watching down on her. That was Sir Franklin’s wish for his daughter to think that, because inside his broken heart, he knew that to be true.

But the true differences that set Sara apart began that dark day when she contracted the raging undulant fever, presumably from drinking unpasteurized milk. Priests were called to the Lyle residence, where they administered her Last Rites while she lay submerged in an ice bath. Though she did not die, the girl’s existence changed from the happy-go-lucky glee of childhood, to a world of never-ending nightmares, where joy was a full night’s sleep without baneful, debilitating visions.

Too many nights of sudden and horrible visions forming within her mind’s eye forced the child to mature too abruptly. Though her father brought in a succession of doctors and specialists, with their elixirs, prescriptions and pseudo-cures, her mind’s eye never lost the ability to siphon images conjured through the air, inexplicably released from seemingly brutal deeds of horror and violence.

The new gift was not limited to visualizations. Sara was dually transformed, displaying a highly developed sketching talent, able to record her visions with utmost clarity, dead-on details from the murder that only an eyewitness would know. Those horrible details that sound benign on paper, such as multiple, bilateral lacerations, eviscerations, decapitations, strangulations. One can only imagine the impact on a young child, enduring the graphic horrors of these murders, the types of weapons used, the facial imagery of killer and victim, and then, swiftly developing the telling scenes as images of charcoal upon paper.

While her classmates were still playing dress up and serving tea, Sara would now spend her days recuperating from those sleepless nights drawing pictures of dark and foreboding scenes, violent images that couldn’t possibly be conceived by a child’s mind. So vivid were these drawings, that one day a constable arrived at the Lyle home, inquiring about the child artist. Sara’s reserved father, Sir Franklin, though concerned, did not seem particularly surprised that the police would want to see her drawings. The neighborhood girls would still visit with Sara when she was well enough. Invariably, they’d ask to see her macabre drawings, and she’d show them. One of the girls had a father who was an officer on the local precinct.

The night that Constable Charles Winston’s daughter informed him about Sara’s drawings, they had just finished eating dinner. He was reading in the parlor by the fireplace, engrossed in the sensational newspaper account of the murder of a renowned London socialite. The maid had found the woman dead in her bedroom chamber, and the police speculated that she had known her assailant, as the house had not been broken into. But there was much more to the story then what the newspapers had printed. Winston’s position with the police department allowed him access to the real sequence of events.

First, the police had not released the full details of how the woman was killed. She had been garroted from behind with a thin strand of rope.

Because of the victim’s celebrated social status, the heat was on from Windsor Castle for an arrest to be made quickly. But the prime suspect, as it turned out, was the victim’s estranged husband. He, too, was from an equally prominent family, afforded the lofty protection that only went to the very wealthy. The scuttlebutt was that the police had nothing that could directly connect him to the murder. To complicate matters further, his family had retained London’s most renowned defense barrister.

So while Constable Charles Winston read the account, his daughter Kate was trying to get his attention. She would talk, and he’d absently nod and say “Yes, my dear.”

But then Kate began talking about Sara, and her drawings. And when she spoke of the dead woman, and a length of rope, Charles started paying notice. And when she said, “The man had rope wrapped around his hands,” he put down the paper, directing his full attention to his daughter. There was too much of a coincidence, between what the girl said and what really happened, for him to ignore.

The next day at work, Winston approached the station Inspector with his findings. The man was skeptical, but knew Winston to be a solid constable. Plus, though not advertised to the public, he knew the police had consulted with psychics on occasion. He granted Winston some leeway for follow-up.

That night, Winston walked the four blocks to the Lyle residence. After some small talk with Sir Franklin, with whom he was acquainted, he explained the reason why he was there.

A distraught Sir Franklin frowned as he thought of his poor daughter, and the new ordeal that she must now endure. “Constable, you must promise me that you will not frighten her. Go gently, please. Between losing her mother when she was a toddler, and now, with these visions of hers, she’s been through quite much, I’m afraid,” he said, leaving the room.

After a few minutes, Franklin returned with Sara. The constable’s heart dropped at the sight of the pale, haggard little girl, listlessly devoid of happiness. Dark circles ringed her eyes, as she looked like she hadn’t slept in days. Winston suddenly felt absurd for having disturbed them. Sensing the policeman’s hesitation, Sir Franklin broke the awkward silence. “Sara, this is Kate’s father, Constable Winston. He’s heard about a drawing you’ve made. He’d like to see it.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong, did I?” Sara asked with a quivering lower lip.

“Of course not, my child,” the constable spoke up. “Quite the contrary. Your drawing might help us catch a bad person, Sara. Scotland Yard, and Her Majesty the Queen would be forever grateful.”

Sara smiled a bit at the thought that she could do something that would be appreciated by the Queen.

The detective asked her about a particular drawing that he’d heard about, where a man was holding a short length of thin rope, wrapped in each hand, around a woman’s neck. And though Sara didn’t know what the word garrote meant, she knew exactly what one looked like, thin strands wrapped and knotted in the killer’s hands as it was.

Sara nodded, moving to her desk, the site where she’d often interpret her thoughts into transfixing images. Leafing through her macabre manuscript, she withdrew one of the sketches and handed it to the constable. The man was taken aback by the darkness and intrinsic detail of what was undoubtedly a murder scene. How could a child conceive such horrible images? Yet the details of the drawing were complex, and the killer’s facial portrait, including an unusual birthmark on his cheek, and puffy, coiffed hair was a dead ringer for the suspect, the estranged husband of the socialite victim. Winston couldn’t take his eyes off the drawing and the harrowing expression on the victim’s face, with its bulging, lifeless eyes.

Suddenly, Sara clutched at her chest, breathing hard. “It’s starting!” she cried. The startled constable watched as Sir Franklin quickly went to her side, pushing a charcoal stick into each of her hands.

“It’s usually at night when this happens. I guess most murders occur at night, Constable?” Sir Franklin asked. “That’s usually when she draws…hardly ever happens during the day.”

Icy fingers clasped the back of the gaping policeman’s neck at the sight accosting his eyes. Sara’s face contorted with anguish, as her eyes rolled white and glazed over. The stunned constable watched as the girl’s ten fingers curled and twitched with an eerie, writhing action, as if controlled by unseen strings. Both hands, drawing independently of one another, found their range with unerring certainty, marking images of violence, occurring at that moment, somewhere in London.

All the while, she’d stare off into space, with those whitened eyes never looking down at the paper. An inner vision seeing a killing committed firsthand, as a ballet of murder…a stabbing death…a victim with many wounds…with an especially deep one in her throat…so deep that only a flap of flesh kept the head intact. The murderer lived one floor above the victim. Sara drew the room numbers. The murder occurred in 512. The killer lived in 612…one block from the red-bricked church facing the river.

A transfixed Winston shuddered at this sight. Surely, it wasn’t possible for this little girl’s hands to move so fast and accurately, while staring sightlessly into space with blank, white orbs? And the quality of her images was extraordinary and certainly could not be duplicated by Scotland Yard’s best police composite artist in five times the span it took the girl to sketch.

Finally, Sara was done. She dropped the charcoal sticks on the desktop, sweat dripping down her face. Sir Franklin poured her a glass of water, which the girl gulped down. “She must rest now, Constable. I’m sure that you understand.”

“Of course, Sir. May I have these two drawings, Sara?”

Looking up to Winston through melancholy eyes, she nodded. The constable thanked the girl and her father, and left. He walked quickly through the darkened, empty streets. As the fog began to swirl around the gas lit street lamps, he looked over his shoulder more than once.
Forty-five minutes and two whiskeys later, Winston’s hands still trembled, as he studied the drawings in the security of his own home. He kept visualizing Sara’s grimace, the dreadful, leering face devoid of eyes. Shuddering, he knew this was all too horrible to be just a nightmare.

In less than twenty-four hours, two arrests relating to Sara’s sketches had been made. Of course, the detectives still needed to interrogate the suspects, but now, armed with the drawings, they skillfully extracted detailed confessions: One suspect’s admission for the garroting murder of his estranged socialite wife, the other from the man who’d butchered his neighbor residing one floor below.

Word of the gifted child artist circulated rapidly through Scotland Yard. Sara immediately became known to the police community as an empath; a visionary. Detectives combed through her portfolio, marveling at her skills. A few whispered that they wished she had been afflicted a few years earlier, when Jack the Ripper had eluded their grasp.

Within a few days they’d determined that Sara had recorded nearly every murder that occurred within a twenty-kilometer radius of her home on the outskirts of London, since her affliction began.

Some cases remained unsolved: Scotland Yard couldn’t identify the depicted killer, who had, perhaps, moved from the area, or had randomly preyed upon the victim, and had nothing else in common with them beside the fateful interlude. And because forensic science was in its infancy, and the police had just embraced the new technology called photography, most criminals were still unphotographed.

However, the cases involving the spouse, jilted lover, or neighbor as a prime suspect, or where the murderer committed multiple killings over a period of time using serial methodology, Sara’s drawing’s proved to be an invaluable tool for the police. Constable Winston was quickly promoted to detective, and was the vital energy driving the special task force investigating the drawings.

Despite Scotland Yard enjoying an unprecedented homicide arrest and conviction rate, there came a point when the logic of the police finding led Sir Franklin to hypothesize that if his daughter was removed from the city, with its relentless violence, then perhaps she could again experience a normal childhood. He decided to put his theory to the test, by taking Sara into the country for an extended, peaceful holiday. The family doctor debated the logic, but Sir Franklin remained steadfast, convinced that he had to at least try. As a retired, knighted army officer, with vast, inherited wealth, he could simply afford to pickup and leave.

Sara loved and trusted her father deeply, and looked forward to the trip with unbridled enthusiasm. She so loved the English forests, with its ancient trees and winding trails of green, and the clear streams of shimmering, cool water that flowed like rivulets of jade. The times that they’d visited the parks near her home, she had nearly forgotten the horrors running rampant through her head.

It was into the village of Hobbs that Sara Lyle and her father Sir Franklin arrived late one autumn afternoon, on their planned trek through the English countryside by horse and carriage, in search of the ever-elusive peace that would allow the lass to recapture the childhood that had been wrested away and still so cruelly eluded her.

But the stop at Hobbs began a new and immediate downward spiral for Sara, as the lass took ill the moment she stepped from the carriage. Within minutes she developed a high-grade fever and began to swoon. Sir Franklin carried Sara to their inn room, where he swabbed her head with towels soaked in cool water. Finally, he asked the proprietor to locate a doctor to examine his daughter, and then bring a bucket of ice. The proprietor in turn ordered his son to fetch Dr. Simon.

Sara began to hallucinate, crying out about the children, the pallid dead ones floating over her bed…with black circles surrounding their lifeless eyes. She verbally anguished for paper and charcoal. At first saying no, her father quickly relented, realizing that she had to draw. As much a necessary function to her life now as breathing and eating, the drawings were her way of coping, a cathartic response to the visionary overdose of violence forced into her mind. Propping her up on two pillows, Sir Franklin gave her the drawing tools.

Her eyes had glazed white, locking with the horror floating over them. Sara’s fingers began their awful dance, like strobing marionettes controlled by the unseen horrors undulating above and now materializing on paper. Limbs adjoining torsos and heads. Repeatedly. Many victims, levitating above the four bedposts.

Watching her draw, her father kept glancing above the bed, knowing that something awful was right there, right then, but an arm’s length beyond. He cringed, with no way of knowing that the spirits were ignoring him, concentrating solely on the fevered Sara. They’d known about her for a long time, knowing that she was their only chance to finally be avenged. All Hallows Eve was nigh; their collective strength could be no stronger than its present state.

Sara’s drawing was quickly completed. In it, twelve children floating above her bedposts, to the backdrop of a tall mountain, with flowing mists leading to a blackened zone at the base. Twelve graves emerging from the darkness beneath the ominous shadow of a man wearing a suit, sporting a neatly trimmed Van dyke beard, holding a shovel.

Sir Franklin examined the sketch. This was perhaps Sara’s most gruesome work. He put the sketch down, swabbing Sara’s fevered forehead with a cloth dipped in cool water. The girl drifted off into a shallow, fitful sleep.

Pacing the room, Sir Franklin again studied the horrid drawing, shuddering. Having faced death and the unknown many times in his life, he was not a man to frighten easily; in his younger days, on an obscure piece of parched earth known as Rorke’s Drift, Natal, he and the 100 men under his command had battled and miraculously repelled 4000 enraged Zulu warriors that had surrounded them, earning him and nine others the Victoria Cross.

During his ensuing military tour of British colonial Africa he’d also witnessed the nocturnal exorcism of a young boy seemingly possessed by demons. The village shaman performing the rites went mad and died while invoking his gods. Sir Franklin had witnessed many ghastly events on that night which he was never able to explain, nor forget.

He had seen the worst that humanity could inflict upon the world. Yet it was all by his own volition, and he was a grown man and a trained soldier.

His poor Sara was just a little girl, forced to not only endure unrelenting horror, but now, the ghosts of murdered children haunting her consciousness. Again, he looked above the bed, knowing they were still there.

For a moment he felt helpless, but had the presence of mind to recall his resolution that he must present a strong front to Sara at all times, even when she was asleep. There was a bond between them that transcended the spoken word. No matter what might happen, he must maintain his strength so she may draw upon it. If all else failed them, it wouldn’t be due to his shortcomings.

Suddenly there was a low rap on their door. Opening it, Sir Franklin did a vivid retake, deeply startled by the man standing with the innkeeper. His blood pressure surging, Franklin fiercely eyed the nattily dressed, bearded Dr. Simon. The man could have been the floor model for Sara’s drawing.

Sensing her father’s sudden stress, the child’s eyes fluttered open. She saw the doctor and her reaction to his presence was severe. Through all this her burning fever intensified, raging forth for the worse, as she recognized the man’s face from her inner vision.

Indeed, Dr. Simon was the murderer of the children, and now she saw that the spirits no longer floated above her, but tore at the doctor with gossamer hands gnarled into claws, faces contorted and eyes ablaze with hatred. Only poor Sara could see this macabre nightmare playing out, in and around her bed.

Not only did she see the children’s spirits, but now, was forced to endure seeing them murdered, again, one at a time, strangled quickly by the leering Dr. Simon. All this within the outline of an inverted pentagram inhabited by dark, cowled figures, contained in a whirling montage detailing the horrific final moments of twelve drastically shortened lives.

“MURDERER...MURDERER,” she screamed out, rearing up, thrashing, her father barely able to hold her down. “The bodies...the bodies in the swamp...In the peat bog!” The doctor flushed at the apparent unveiling of his ruse, though the inn proprietor thought it was just fever talk.

Sara’s father, however, knew of her uncanny gift and of course her most recent drawing, with this doctor drawn so precisely. He eyed the physician with great wariness, contemplating whether to hold him for the village authorities.

The doctor was panicking. He sensed correctly that it wouldn’t take long for people to start listening to this girl. He wanted to kill her, and from his black leather bag prepared a syringe with a lethal dose of barbiturate. Sara sensed this too, watching the children’s spirits tear at the doctor with a renewed frenzy. She screamed to her father “DON’T LET HIM TOUCH ME!”

Having never seen his daughter this hysterical, Sir Franklin forbade Simon from examining, let alone injecting her, physically placing himself between Sara and the doctor. “Leave here, while you still may,” he scowled at Doctor Simon, still a formidable presence with his ire evoked, as now.

There was a tense standoff between the men. The doctor realized if he attacked the man before him to get to the girl, there’d be no rational explanation he could later provide, so he hurriedly exited the room and left the inn, heading back to his office to collect digging tools. If he could dispose of the bodies into the quicksand before the girl could lead searchers there, he thought, there’d be no direct evidence to tie her claims to him.

As he left his office, shovel and lantern in hand, he paid no heed to the calendar, or the wall clock chiming half-past eleven. All Hallows Eve.

Hurrying along darkened roads, forcing his horse to gallop faster than prudence would allow while pulling a buggy down winding paths traveled more by sheep than men, he pushed with the madness borne of desperation.

Finally, he jerked in the reins and stopped, on Gully Road near the point where Colin and Michael had fatefully parted ways twelve years before. The white, billowing mists had already cascaded down the cliffs, shrouding the swamp. Lighting his lantern, the doctor moved quickly, knowing he had much work to do before sunrise.

In the dark, tense silence he made his way to the secret place where the children were buried. He began digging. Time did not seem to pass…

All of a sudden an icy shroud of fear clasped his limbs as he saw that the interred children, in various states of decomposition had begun to push out of their graves, grasping at him. Swinging the shovel, he shrieked, but the blade just swiped empty air. The ghastly children, with the collective strength of the supernatural that was theirs but once a year, were able to tear at him with ripping hands.

The vengeful moans of the damned were a frightening sound to behold, and the terror-stricken Dr. Simon ran blindly through the dark, bellowing, with the children flying after him, swarming, smiting, biting, able to keep up with him effortlessly, though he was running fast as he could. Bleeding from a score of cuts, eyes gouged, he lost his bearings in the mist.

Suddenly, the earth below him was gone as he stepped into the quicksand. As he frantically clawed for solid ground, the spirits suddenly disappeared, and he momentarily caught his balance by grabbing a handful of sedge grass strands. For an instant, his frantic breathing the only audible sound, he nearly pulled himself clear.

But then, sounding ominously in the distance the village clock struck midnight. The children’s spirits pounced upon him anew, rending, tearing, laughing with sardonic malignancy. Losing his grip, Simon screamed, slowly sinking into the mire and drowning beneath the fouled water.

With requited tenacity, the spirits watched grimly, as Simon could only die once, instead of twelve times like they. Silent now, satiated with the revenge that finally was theirs, they held hands, ascending in a slow, numinous spiral, higher and higher into the heavens until they had disappeared.

Hours had passed before the local constable arrived and spoke at length with Sir Franklin Lyle and the innkeeper. He’d, of course, heard of the child empath who had helped Scotland Yard solve dozens of London homicides. After taking a long, hard look at Sara’s drawing, they searched for the good Doctor Simon. By dawn, the trail led to the swamp beneath the cliffs, where the doctor’s horse and buggy were discovered.

Shortly after, they found his footprints, still outlined in the stagnant water, leading across the bedrock trail through the quicksand. Then the lantern, still lit, and shovel were found, along with the twelve full graves, and his footprints-alone-leading to the quicksand’s edge.

The ensuing investigation never revealed why the killer hadn’t simply disposed of his victims instead of burying them in the peat. Suffice to say, the police located evidence of satanic ritual beneath the doctor’s residence, in an ancient chamber dating to the days of druids and runes, laden with dark, stained stone altars, and carved, inverted pentagrams.

Beneath the words 'MOLOCH EST ET VIVIT' chisled into the walls of stone, robed figures in black, with but lambent eyes visible beneath ebony cowls had been painstakingly painted throughout, mute witnesses to the horrors inflicted by Dr. Simon. The black arts were long-rumored to involve the periodic exhumation of remains. There was ample proof of that having transpired in this awful room.

Just at the stroke of midnight, as Dr. Simon was meeting his demise, Sara’s fevery illness had suddenly broken, and soundly she slept till late morning. Upon awakening, with the visions of the previous night fading to memory, she sensed that the forces were again aligned, as the green calm of peace permeated her vision. The children were gone.

Word of the murderer’s identity spread through the Hobbs populace like wild fire. People were devastated by their doctor’s connection with the village curse. Though grief-stricken parents lamented the twelve children that were finally found, there wouldn’t be a sigh of final relief from the rest of the village until a full year had come and gone without a child disappearing.

As for Sara Lyle and her father, they moved finally to a village far north of Hobbs. On the cusp of the moors was the hamlet of Leedston. There hadn’t been a killing there in anyone’s memory.

In the quaint village a tiny, one-roomed schoolhouse stood, above which lazy, gray smoke drifted out of the chimney from the black, pot-bellied wood stove within. A pretty school marm, whom both Sara and her father would grow to adore, taught twenty students there. Four were girls Sara’s age, and they took to her right away. When school was out, they’d play tea and dress their dolls in the latest Victorian outfits.

Now that she slept the night through, Sara’s eyes shined with life again, with the return of her enchanting smile. Sir Franklin’s heart was at peace once more.

The girls would often play a game, where the object was to quiz your opponent with a series of true or false questions, then bluff with answers, and decide who was lying, and who was telling the truth. Though always able to win if she desired, Sara chose to intentionally lose more often than not, knowing that it was only fair to her new friends for her to do so.

* * * * *

Lenny V.

[Ragter the junior greeter]

Welp, I got it done; started about...4 or 5 hours ago and just finished it. I have to say, I had a lot more fun writing it than I thought I would. I don't really know either if it'll scare people; I'm not an expert in the genre, after all. Still, what matters most to me is that I loved writing this and that I tried my best.

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Sin

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