“… and
the blood poured over them, forever and ever until the end of time. The End.”
The school-age audience gaped back at The Storyteller until one girl
raised her hand. “Yes?”
“Sorry,
thank you for the story, but it wasn’t really… scary, it was just gross.” A few “Yeah”s agreed.
“Oh. I thought ‘gross’ was what all the kids
wanted nowadays,” The Storyteller said.
“Actually,”
the little girl said, “we’ll take just scary, `cause right now I feel a little
like I want to barf.” The idea spread
like wildfire and all the kiddies’ faces turned green.
“Ooh,”
The Storyteller winced and held her hands out to hold off any of that. “All right, no barfing, please. So, you all want scary?” Their heads nodded. “Creepy?”
Nodded. “Spine-chillingly
terrifying?” Nodded – one clapped his
hands. “Ooey, gooey, and hairy?” They shook their heads and a few gagged. “Very well, then. I think I can whip up something to your
liking. I call this one:"
A Proper Ghost
Story
There
once was a young lady who recently came into a small fortune and decided that
it was high time that she struck off on her own in the world. So, saying “Fare thee well” to her mummy and
her daddy, she traveled from city to city and town to town, searching for a
place she could now slap on the label of Home.
She found a lovely little suburb in the Midwest of the U.S. and soon
found a lovely little house that she bought surprisingly dirt cheap. Grave-dirt cheap, in fact, because it turns
out that the lovely little house was, in fact, HAUNTED.
<Gasps and hands flying to faces>
Of
course, our young lady was not informed that she was purchasing a haunted house
at the time of the sale because her real estate agent was unethical. <What’s “unethical”?> <Means you’re mean.> So she moved in her few possessions – she had
been travelling very lightly up until now – and settled in with all her plans
for the great interior decorating projects she had in store for her new abode.
That is,
until, THAT NIGHT.
That
night, she went to sleep on her air mattress – very handy in her previous
lifestyle – in what was now her bedroom.
The walls were bare, the floors were bare, and even the windows were
bare because she needed to buy curtains, which will take forever because you
have to decide on your color scheme, and what to have for summer and what to
have for winter, and – she lay there for a while, realizing all the
responsibilities and never-ending to-do lists being a homeowner entails. She lay there, in the dark, slowly moving
from thoughts of interior design to noticing how the wind moaned through the
nearly empty house.
Whooooooosh,
whoooo, whooo, whoooo-OOOOOHHHH-ooooohhhh!
The full
moon shone through her room’s window <I thought she was in the dark?> … until
clouds blocked it from sight and left her in darkness once more. She also thought she saw some bats fluttering
by outside, unless they were just some very confused birds.
And then,
she heard IT.
Drip,
drip, drip.
She tried
to ignore it but the bare house was an echo chamber.
Drip, drip,
drip.
She put a
pillow over her head.
Drip.
Knowing
that would be all night, she got up and walked to the main bathroom. The faucet was leaking, and tightening
everything did not help. Another to-do
item for the next day: pick up some putty.
BANG!
<Everyone jumped>
The crash
came from the living room. Quickly, she
ran back to her bedroom, picked up the baseball bat that was propped against the
wall next to her mattress, and tip-toed to the living room. She creaked slowly down the hallway, CREAK,
CREAK, CREAK. She came to the living
room door and sloooowly pushed it open, CREEEEEAK. She gripped the bat harder, sloooooowly
looked around the door, and saw –
"It’s
4:00, story time’s over, see you all next week!”
“Noooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!”
