Halloween Ghost Story Contest -- 2014
High School Winners

First Place

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Our first place High School winning entry is by Cassie Liu of North York, Ontario, Canada, a ninth grade student of Zion Heights Junior High School.

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Twenty Blind Mice

by
Cassie Liu

Martha was writhing as if on fire.

Pink spots rimmed with furious red circles dotted across her face and down her body, accompanied by strips of skin, savagely torn away by Martha’s fingernails before the doctors had bandaged them.

Her left arm hung off the edge of the sterile cot, dripping blood from an incision into a wooden, bloodletting bowl on the ground. The arms of the flimsy nightshirt she wore were torn apart, dangling by the thinnest of threads.

“The bandages,” she gasped, “can you take them off?”

I grimaced. “Sorry Martha. Doctor’s orders.”

Instead of replying, her right arm reached out for the ornamental comb on the table beside her. Rivulets of blood appeared on her cheeks as she dragged the ivory teeth down her face, tearing away the skin.

“Martha!” When I reached to snatch the comb out of her hands, she slapped my wrist and I jerked back, afraid of her lashing anger and hate that the doctors had warned me about.

 

The comb in Martha’s hand began moving at a faster, angrier pace. The smell of blood, like wet metal, diffused through the room.

“The doctors,” she wheezed. Her eyes, shot with blood vessels, cut to the door.

Three quick raps echoed through the room and without waiting for a response, two doctors entered, coats and gloves white as feathers on a dove and boots the colour of ink.

Their faces were covered from forehead to chin with a leather mask, kept in place by a thick black band stretched across the back of their heads. Two holes had been cut out for the eyes and then encased by thin, circular slates of glass.

Hospital procedures, they had explained.

“Good. You’ve kept the windows closed,” the first doctor observed, his voice muffled under the mask. “Miss Nora. As usual, we need you to leave the room while we treat your sister.”

I reached over to squeeze Martha’s bandaged hands but she immediately withdrew away from me. Sighing, I inclined my head at the doctors and hastily stepped out into the hall.

I inhaled and took in the walls painted the colour of the doctors’ coats, the whining of the wooden floorboards –

A shrill scream came from inside Martha’s room, cutting through the silence.

“Martha?”

There was a low growl and a split second later, a whimper, a gasp and a string of soft moans.

“It’s not working,” the frustrated voice of one of the doctors floated into the hall. “The syringe; where is it?”

“There’s no time,” a second voice said. “She’s barely holding up. We need to re-start.”

“She’s the twentieth one already.”

I banged a fist on Martha’s door. “Doctors, please! My sister!”

The door flung open and the moaning stopped abruptly. The tall frame of a doctor appeared, his white gloves laced with crimson. “Miss Nora. You’re rather pale; are you feeling all right?”

“My sister. . .”

“Her illness is gone,” he answered, slipping off his gloves and shaking his head. “Another failure, it seems. But we understand now; we’ve learned.”

He held out a hand and my pulse quickened, my pupils dilated. “Come now, Miss Nora. You look ill; why don’t you let us help you?”