So Much for Fun and Games...

Of course, we laughed back when we heard the rumors about that Mansion. It was classic, just as if it was supposed to be a horror story, fated as such. An old mansion, all run down on the top of an eerie hill with a graveyard in the back. They said it was haunted, of course. It was the town’s joke, but still…nobody ever went up there.
My friends and I had always wondered why this happened to be, and so the Halloween when we were Seniors, ready for graduation two months in, we decided we’d break in.
It wasn’t just me who went, but it was Jeremy, who lived off of horror flicks, and his cousin Eileen, who swore she sensed ghosts everywhere. There was Anna, and her boyfriend Jackson, who adored all Saw movies… and there was my best friend, Ryan. He and I had been through every Resident evil game, watched collection after collection of horror movies, you know…the works. We knew, above everyone else, that we would not be scared. But that night, everything would change for us…
As we walked, laughing, giggling, trying to psyche each other out, I realized how pitch black it was, cloud covered and darker than coal outside. We had with us things like potato chips, and soda, and flashlights… Eileen had brought loads of salt and alleged “Holy Water”. The hill was steep, but we finally made it to it’s crown, to the front doors of the abandoned mansion. In the flickering flashlight’s beam, our silhouettes danced on the boards that forbid our entrance. With a swift kick, Jackson and Ryan had the boards down, leaving an echo, as if the sound itself was swallowed by an abyss in the darkness.
I personally hesitated as we stepped through our forced-entry way, and Ryan held onto my shoulder.
“Kate, it’ll be just fine.” He said, smiling and laughing a little. I nodded, and stepped through. Jeremy and Eileen were nowhere to be found, but we heard their footsteps up ahead, and caught glances of reflected flashlight beams. They were fine, until the floorboards creaked the wrong way and Eileen freaked out. She came bolting down the rotting main staircase, into the foyer, shrieking like a banshee. Dust was falling from the sudden explosion of movement.
“Eileen!” I shouted, stopping her. “What’s wrong? What Happened!?”
Everyone stared her down, worrying, wondering why she was the first to get psyched out.
“They ARE real!” She exclaimed, struggling, and screaming. “THEY ARE HERE!”
I couldn’t hold on to her, and so she scratched at me until I finally let go. She burst through the front door, and screamed all the way out. The air chilled me to the bone. We began our ascent from the foyer when we heard a bone-chilling series of cracks. The Mansion was old after all. We called out Jeremy’s name, hoping for an answer, praying Eileen was just weird, not correct.
At the landing there was a grand door, ajar just an inch with reflected flashlight beams pouring out of it. We all took a step closer, hoping Jeremy was in there. Suddenly, the floor gave under Jackson’s feet. The cracking wasn’t a joke, not explained by age. The floor boards were rotten, and unstable. Anna wailed as she knelt by the hole in the floor. I was scared, my heart was pounding a mile a minute, hoping Jackson hadn’t been seriously injured in the fall. As we all looked down, we couldn’t believe what we saw. Jackson wasn’t hurt, he had been captured, by green, rotting arms, writhing, scratching and pulling him. He was screaming, bloodcurdling yells for help, to save him…until a hand clamped shut over his mouth and nose, and more tugged his hair and head down under the mass. Anna wailed, and dug her nails into mine and Ryan’s arms, as we tried to pull her out of her state of panic.
“We HAVE to go!” I shouted, heart beating, trying to escape the safety of it’s ribcage. We managed to rush down the staircase, when Anna tripped and fell. A chorus of gurgling, gory sounds confronted us as we turned back to help her. THEY were climbing out of the hole that Jackson had fallen through. They were rotten, reanimated, and hungry. THEY were also piling out of the hole and stumbling down the stairs towards us. Anna shrieked in a piercing, painful soprano as her dark hair got stuck in the cracks of the floor boards. We tugged, and she laid there listless, crying. Her ankle was broken, and I saw it twisted unnaturally, sprawled out behind her.
“GO!” She screamed. “DAMN IT! GO, WHILE YOU CAN!”
My throat tightened as Ryan pulled frantically at my arm. We had barely set foot in there, and already our friends were trapped or history.
“I…can’t!” I cried, as he forcefully tugged my arm, hurting and bruising it. What had happened to us not being scared? I couldn’t help but get dizzy as I screamed for Anna, Jackson, and Jeremy.
Outside, Ryan stopped short, and I tumbled to the ground. He was shaking, and as I got up, tears and dust streaking my face, I knew why. We were surrounded. The creatures that Eileen had warned us about…they weren’t ghosts… they were worse…
They growled and lurched around us, we had disturbed their sleep.
“Ryan!” I whispered, clutching his arm, his neck. “Wh-what are we gonna do?” My voice cracked as I tried to form words. Fear scarred my heart, my mind, I was lost. He looked unnaturally down at me with blank eyes, and blood dripping from his open mouth. A hand was protruding from his chest, clutching his still-beating heart in it’s hand. I heard it’s awful breathing and I screamed. Turning to run, hands clutched onto my arms, my hair, ripping my scalp, breaking my limbs. The last thing I saw was sets of rotten gums, with sharp teeth gleaming in the moonlight…

Author's Note

Heyy~ I entered a short story contest on another site, where specific words were supposed to be used, and it had to be 1,ooo words or less.

I tried.

Here's the requirements:
* Every entry must fit one of the themes! The only themes we're runnin' are listed below. Entries should generally be scary, but some may be funny.

- Haunted houses or spiritual experiences
- Vampires
- Werewolves
- Trick-or-treating
* Please keep all entries under 1000 words, title excluded. Poems and stories will be accepted.

* IF SUBMITTING A SHORT STORY - your entry must include ALL the words - writhe, abyss, coal, gore, and silhouette. These words can become plural, and they can become "writhed", "silhouetted" or "gored" but letters CANNOT be removed from them (with the exception of 'gore', which can become "gory"). Any entries that do not include these will not be accepted.

* ALSO IF SUBMITTING A SHORT STORY - your entry must finish on the sentence "teeth gleaming in the moonlight". This sentence may be broken up by punctuation, ie. "Teeth. Gleaming in the moonlight." etc. etc. Any entries that do not will not be accepted.

Yeah. That's not much to work with....

Please be honest :D I want to know what you all think.

Reviews

[Wildfleour]

Well, you seem to have fulfilled the requirements, Katie. I, personally, am a little tired with all the vampire, etc. drama..........except the New Moon movie (smile).

As always, you tell a good story and your writing is good. I am ready to see you stretch yourself into a genre that you are not so comfortable in. :)