To celebrate Halloween, Podium staff have taken a trip into the darkest recesses of their deranged minds and flexed their creative writing muscles to bring you a collection of six short horror stories.
We’d love to hear what you think: see if you can guess who wrote which story, and tell us your favourite, via our Facebook page.
And please, don’t have nightmares!
I wake up as the car stops. I’m still sleepy. I don’t want to move.
Daddy opens my door and takes off my seatbelt, lifting me out and carrying me along the path to Granny’s house.
I like my Granny but I don’t like her house. It’s cold and smells funny. There are strange noises and the sad little girl with the grey face always wants to play with me.
“Come and play,” she always says. “Why don’t you come and play?” I hope she isn’t there today.
I don’t like her games. I don’t like the things she makes me do. She hurts me.
Granny opens the door and smiles, hugging me like she always does. I try to smile, I want to say hello, but the grey girl is standing behind her. Her hair looks wet and her clothes are ripped. She smiles at me but she doesn’t look happy. I look down and close my eyes, hiding my face in Granny’s jumper.
When I look again, the girl has gone. I feel better.
That’s when I realise Granny’s clothes feel wet. She feels smaller. It’s not Granny I’m hugging any more.
“Come and play,” she whispers in my ear…
I have fond memories of visiting my great aunt’s house when we were kids. The rooms were big and there were porcelain dolls lined up in pretty frilled dresses that sat on the shelves leading up to the staircase. She always brought us treats and we could play in the yard when it was warm outside. We often played hide and seek, there were so many places to hide, inside the antique wardrobes and under the oak tables. Isabelle always knew the best places to hide though, she had been playing the game a lot longer than I had. Isabelle was my best friend, she had long blonde hair and silk-white skin and an infectious laugh.
I’ll never forget the last time we ever played together. There was a record downpour of rain and Isabelle broke the news that she would be moving away. This would be the last time we played together. “5-4-3-2-1, ready or not here I come”. I spent hours trying to find her, turning the rooms upside down until my aunt asked me what was wrong.
“Isabelle is a figure of your imagination, she doesn’t exist,” my aunt exclaimed. I scrambled down the stairs and locked myself in the basement and sobbed. As my tears hit the ground, a cold draught blew an old cut out newspaper article on my lap. There was a picture of my aunt’s house: it was run down and the trees were overgrown. It looked abandoned. The article described how a tormented mother escaped from a mental institution and poisoned her daughter. The little girl was called Isabelle. They never found her body.
“Mummy? I’m scared.”
“Huh… What is it honey? What’s wrong?” pushing mself up from the pillow, I searched the darkness for my son’s eyes.
“I fell out of bed,” he replied tearfully, letting out a sob.
I reached out to comfort him, finding his cheek burning hot. As my hand cupped the side of his face, I felt a warm, thick liquid that sent me into a panic. “Simon! Are you okay?” I cried as I pulled back the covers and rushed to turn the light on.
The bright flash of the lights illuminating the room forced me awake with a start. I paused, blinded, as reality rushed over me and my stomach dropped. The years of trying to conceive, my failed attempts at becoming pregnant, the mutual agreement to split up after an era of disappointment. Simon wasn’t injured. He wasn’t real.
Grief washed over me as I bent down, hands on my knees to restore some air to my brain. I took a long, deep breath and decided to retreat to bed. Turning, I reached for the light switch…
When I was in primary school, I went through a phase of being interested in religion and I would go to the Sunday church school every weekend. One Sunday some kids started talking about this story that was going around.
The story was that if you stand in front of a mirror at 3 am and you do your cross three times the opposite way the devil will appear to you. Our teacher warned us not to talk about “the one that should not be named” and to never EVER try this at home.
That night I went to bed and for some weird reason I woke up at 2:57 am. I had a little kid watch on my left wrist and I could see the time. My eyes fell straight to the mirror on my wardrobe. I looked at my watch and quickly got up, stood in front of the mirror and did my cross the opposite way three times.
I looked in the mirror for a few seconds, looking into my eyes and run into my bed. I sat there looking around my bed, I wasn’t even scared.
KNOCK!
I must have fallen asleep, but a loud knock woke me up.
KNOCK!
I was sure the noise was coming from the mirror, so I got up and went near the mirror, nothing.
I went right beside the mirror and put my ear on it….
KNOCK!
KNOCK!
I remember the feeling of terror just went through my body; I felt the mirror moving beside my ear.
I started crying, looking in the mirror as it moved with every…
KNOCK
KNOCK
KNOCK
KNOCK!
The knock was getting louder and stronger…
KNOCK
KNOCK
KNOCK!
My soul belongs to him now…
When you’re a child, they tell you nightmares aren’t real. As an adult you learn that the worst ones take place in real life. I ask myself if I am awake? If I am asleep? Or if I am in the purgatory between?
The doctor says I’m suffering from sleep paralysis and it’s nothing to worry about. A common sleep disorder, it affects a lot of people.
But late at night in the darkness of my room, I forget her words. When the demon pushes down on my fragile chest, I’m gasping for air.
His cold breath smothers my face. I try with all my strength to roll over, but my body remains there, stagnant. My mind beats against my physical being, jailed inside my own skin.
Last night it was different, it was worse. I felt and saw him there. One hand holding me down, in the other he was holding something.
My soul recoiled as each fragment of salt and pepper hit my frozen body –
Ready. Steady. Shook.
I vowed to myself – I will never fall asleep watching cooking programmes again.
I took a moment to stop, sweating, bloodied and exhausted. I eventually look at the note, it read “It’s me. I am with you. I am safe in your head. If you tell ANYONE, I will not be able to protect you anymore. It WILL come back”.
Crawling through some dense bushes I saw it, my Grandparents old farmhouse. It was old and decayed; I could see inside through damaged outer walls. I knew something happened here that grandma never told me. I had to know.
I pushed the front door, but of course the door was jammed and lacked a handle. I made my way around the back to the kitchen entrance. I felt uneasy, as if I was being watched; the land was extremely open.
I made my way in. It was open, like when Grandma was here. The house held a damp smell and although the night sky was without a cloud, the full moon could barely enter apart from the odd broken plank in the walls. It was very dark.
It was then I knew I shouldn’t have come. A dark human like figure lurked in the kitchen corner, motionless. Then I saw the bloodied face and missing eyes.
I shot for the stairs and made it Grandmas old room, I locked the door and saw a basket. It contained a doll and a note. Without thinking I scampered out of the broken window onto the porch roof tumbling onto the grassy floor below. I ran.
Thanks for reading: don’t forget to tell us your favourite via our Facebook page.
In case you missed it, this is how we marked Halloween last year:
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