Halloween Ghost Story Contest -- 2018
High School Winners

First Place

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Our first place High School winning entry is by Kimberly Blake, a home-schooled student from Medina, Ohio.

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The Ghost of Inigmar Hall

by
Kimberly Blake

“Logan? Logan!”

“What is it, Addie?” I called, still scanning my chemistry notes.

“Logan, I can’t find my tiara,” Addison whined, sticking her head into my room.

“What, you think I took it?”

“Daddy said to have you help me look for it, because he’s busy making dinner.”

I sighed. Chemistry would have to wait, never minding my grades. It was Halloween night, and that meant I would get no studying done until Addison and Jackson were dressed up and prepared to go trick or treating with Mom.

“Did you look under your bed?” I asked. “Not there.”

“In your closet?”

“Not there either.”

“Did Jackson take –“

“Logan, stop stalling and help me look!”

I groaned as she started pulling on my arm, half dragging me out of my chair. For seven and a half years old, she sure acted like the grown-up in the house.

After a quarter hour of Addison leading me all around the house and telling me where to look(while she stood there watching me search, I might add), we, or rather I, found the tiara hooked around the hanger on which hung her princess dress, which had concealed the stupid thing from Addison’s view.

“Hooray! We found it! Thanks, Logie.”

“Stop calling me that,” I complained, disentangling myself from her hug. “It’s Logan.”

She just made a face and ran downstairs to the kitchen, shouting, “Daddy, I found it!”

Oh, Addie. I sighed, following her downstairs.

When I got to the kitchen, Dad was spooning spaghetti onto - uh oh. Just four plates.

“Isn’t Mom home?” I asked.

“She called and told me one of her patients had some complications during a test, they called her in, and she won’t be back in time to go out with the twins.”

“So. . .” I began, hoping desperately that my rising suspicion was wrong, “so, I guess I’ll pass out the–“

“I was kind of hoping you’d be willing to take them around.”

At this both Jackson and Addison cheered and began chanting “Trick-or-treat with Lo-gan! Trick-or-treat with Lo-gan!”

“Yeah, okay, or that,” I sighed.

I pulled my plate of food towards me gloomily, thinking Well, if I fail my test, I have two perfect culprits to blame it on.

As if reading my mind, Dad smiled, “It’s not as if you’d get much work done having to go answer the door every three minutes.”

Well, maybe, but at least I’d still be sane enough to do it tonight.

Another twenty minutes and we were ready (as ready as I was going to get, anyway) to head out, but as I opened the door, Addison shrieked

“WAIT!”

“What now?” I demanded.

“You don’t have a costume, Logan.”

She said it as though it were some earth-shattering crisis.

To pacify her (and keep from her drawing a mustache and eye patch on my face in permanent marker), I said, “Sure I do. I’m going out as a prison inmate.” “That’s a horrible costume, Logie!” she cried, horrified. “Yeah,” smirked Jackson, “I don’t even see handcuffs.” “Then go look in a mirror. Now, are we ready, or not?” “Yeah, candy!” Jackson cheered.

Addison still looked doubtful, but the allure of chocolate bars, candy corn, and gummy bears was simply too great to allow further argument. She nodded.

I hadn’t been out trick-or-treating since I was ten years old. Since I turned eleven and decided that begging candy off the neighbors was below me, Dad and I had both stayed at home watching Halloween specials, and for the past two years, horror movies that Mom would have killed us for having in the house. It was a little embarrassing, having Jackson and Addison drag me around the neighborhood and all the way up to each door.

A couple times, friends from school would answer the door, smirking at me for being landed with the twins, whom we referred to as “Double Trouble.” I would make a face back at them, hopefully sending the message that, tomorrow, at school, we pretend this never happened.

“Are you two ready to go back now?” was my hopeful refrain after every house we’d gone to since 8:00.

“Just one more!” Addison begged, “The Coopers always give out homemade pumpkin cookies, they’re so good, please!?”

The Coopers!

“Oh no, oh no. No, no, no, no, no,” I said. “We are not going anywhere near the Coopers.”

Nataly Cooper was in my grade, homeroom, and science, math, and English classes. She was amazingly pretty, brilliantly smart, and astonishingly nice. I had a huge crush on her. That meant I did not want to show up at her door trick-or-treating with my two crazy siblings. No way. Not happening.

“Please, Logan! Please!”

Now Jackson chimed in.

“Please, Logan, last one, promise! Besides, Nataly answered last year, and since we came so late she gave us each two!”

“Nataly answered? No, that seals it. Come on, home.”

“But. . . but. . .Logie. . .”

“Addie, don’t, don’t, please, no!” I pleaded, knowing what was coming.

Too late.

She pulled out her weapon.

The unassailable puppy eyes.

“Ga-ah, fine!” I groaned. “Fine, okay, we’ll go.”

“Yahoo!” cheered Jackson.

“Thank you, Logie, you’re the best!” Addison cried, throwing her arms around me. I sighed. “Just don’t make me regret this.”

“Trick-or-treat!” the twins yelled. The door opened.

Please don’t be Nataly, please don’t be Nataly.

It was Nataly.

“Hey, you two!” she smiled. Then she saw me. “Oh, hi, Logan.” Was it my imagination, or were her cheeks pink as she handed each twin a cookie? “I didn’t expect to see you out.”

100% embarrassed, I started rambling, throwing out every excuse I had: “My mom usually goes with the twins, but she had a problem at work, and she couldn’t get home, and so Dad asked, and I didn’t want to say no, and so I kinda got roped into it, but normally I wouldn’t –“

“I think it’s really sweet of you to go with them,” she said. “I wish I had little brothers or sisters.”

Ordinarily, I would have said, ‘no, you don’t, trust me,’ but she was smiling in such a way that my stomach flipped over, and I was helpless but to mumble,

“I – yeah, it’s. . . great.”

We stood there awkwardly for a couple seconds, me wanting to say something cool or interesting, Nataly growing slightly pinker, and Addison staring up at us. Jackson should have been smirking at how tongue-tied I was, but come to think of it. . .

“Jackson?”

Both girls jumped, looking around.

“Jackie?” Addison asked.

I didn’t see him. “Oh, no!” I moaned.

“Jackson?” Nataly called.

Dad’s going to kill me!

“Jackson, quit the jokes, this is not funny.” I stared out at the dimly lit street. Nothing. Then, “Guys, come quick, it’s a ghost!”

“Jackson!” I scolded, running down the driveway towards his voice. “Jack, cut it out, get back here! Addie, come on.” “I’m coming, too.”

Nataly ran up next me with Addison, pulling a coat on over her flannel.

“I, uh, you don’t have to –“

“I distracted you. Besides, I’ve explored every inch of those woods, and I think I know where he’s going.”

“You what? Really?”

She nodded. “There’s a decrepit old house about a five-minute walk in, if he’s trying to spook you, that’s where he’s headed.”

“But Jack doesn’t know it’s there, does he?” Addison asked. “I don’t know, but we’d better look.” I said grimly.

Jackson, if this whole thing is a joke, I am going to kill you.

“There!” Nataly panted, pointing, “that’s it.”

An old, decaying, Victorian style house stood in the center of a clearing. The dark paint was chipping away, the windows were boarded up, and there were holes in the walls and roof. Ivy clung to the walls and weeds surrounded the building’s base. Its cupola was framed by moonlight. The house looked extremely forbidding.

I felt something icy cold touch my palm and jumped; then I realized that it was just Addison, who’d been trying to take my hand.

She reached out again, looking scared, so I let her cling to my fingers, trying to swallow down my own nerves.

“Look,” Nataly pointed, “the door. It’s open.”

“Someone’s in there.” I muttered.

“Logie, I’m scared,” Addison whimpered, now wrapping her free arm around my leg.

“It’s okay, Addie. Here, you stay here with Nataly, and I’ll go in and find Jack.”

“You are not going in there alone, Logan Peters.” Nataly said stubbornly.

“Oh, come on! You can’t honestly believe this place is for-real haunted.”

Her face told me otherwise.

“Okay,” I sighed. “We’ll all go.”

When Addison refused to move, I picked her up off the ground. She wrapped her arms and legs around my torso, hiding her face in my shoulder.

Cautiously, Nataly and I proceeded through the doorway.

Everything in the house was decaying, covered in mold and dust, and the air was stiflingly thick.

It felt like I was the set of those old black-and-white Halloween specials I’d watched with Dad. “Jackson,” I called softly, “Jackson, come on out. Game’s over, okay? Let’s go home.”

When were about halfway into the room, the door slammed shut suddenly behind us. Nataly screamed; I whipped around as the candles around the room burst into flame. A single eerie, droning note pervaded through the room.

Thundering footsteps were heard above us. I shoved Addison into Nataly’s arms and stepped in front of them both. A second later, Jackson came hurtling down the stairs, hollering “GHOST! It’s a ghost!”

“Jackson, chill out, cut the jokes!”

“No joke, Logan! It’s a real ghost.”

“Come on, we’re going home.” I wheeled around and led the others back to the door, pulling on it.

It was locked.

“Welcome, children, to Inigmar Hall.”

Slowly, fearfully, we all turned around.

An honest-to-goodness, pearly white, translucent, real-live – make that real-dead – ghost stood right at the foot of the stairs.

Addison screamed at the top of her lungs, permanently ruining everyone’s eardrums, and buried her face in Nataly’s shoulder.

“What are you, what do you want?” I demanded. I was surprised (but also pleased) to find that my voice was entirely steady.

“My name is Maddox Inigmar. This was once my home, long, long ago, when I was alive.”

“That must have been a really long time ago,” Jackson blurted out. “Did you ever see a dinosaur?”

“Jackson Andrew!” I scolded.

“What? It’s just a question.”

Maddox Inigmar, looking extremely offended, said in an overly dignified tone, “For your information, you impertinent little boy, I lived from eighteen hundred and twenty-six to eighteen hundred and ninety-two.”

“What do you want from us?” I repeated.

“Oh, that’s simple.” Inigmar waved a hand. “I just need someone mortal – that is to say, physical - to complete a little task for me.”

“Of course.” Nataly murmured, as though suddenly realizing something. “It’s something you meant to do before you died, isn’t it?” she added, looking up at Inigmar. “But you couldn’t finish it because you can’t touch whatever it was anymore.”

“Naturally, my dear.” Inigmar nodded to her, looking pleased. “It’s the way of all ghosts I fear. We take the chance to finish our unfinished business, utterly forgetting that we ourselves are unable, and thereby dooming ourselves to a hundred years of misery and restlessness.” He sighed dramatically before adding, “and boredom!”

“So. . . what is it you wanted us to do?” I asked, my nervousness fading.

“Oh, it’s quite simple, really. Up in the cupola is my diary. I am – was – a scientist by nature, and though I suppose by now your world has discovered many of the things therein, I cannot think myself so utterly egotistical for wanting my work acknowledged.”

“You just want us to give your diary to a science museum?” Nataly asked.
“Are there museums now devoted to science? Oh, how spectacular!” Inigmar exclaimed. Quite literally glowing with happiness, he turned and floated up the stairs, Nataly, Jackson,

Addison (who had finally worked up the courage to walk on her own), and I following.
“I’m afraid most of the stair-well has rotted away,” Inigmar apologized. “I simply couldn’t afford to have one of those spiral-shaped iron ones. Ah well. Over popular, those were, anyhow.”

He wasn’t kidding. Of the dozen or so stairs that had, at one time, existed, there now remained only the top and bottom.

“Okay. . .” I started, thinking. “Okay, Addie, I’ll boost you up, and then you can-“

“I’m not going up there!” she protested, “There’s got to be rats and spiders up there, and I do not like rats or spiders.”

“Okay, then Jackson, you can go up and- ugh! Jackson!” he’d run off again. “Jackson, come back here, we need you!”

“No way!” his voice called down the hall. “I’m exploring. It’s not every day you get to see a real-life haunted house.”

“Jackson,” I moaned, checking my watch. “It’s almost nine o clock; if we don’t get home soon,

Dad is going to flip.” Turning back towards Nataly, I muttered, “I don’t even want to know what your parents are going to say-“

“Oh, they’re in Boston with my grandmother right now. It’s just my Aunt Trina over, and she’s been glued to the TV all night.” Nataly said dismissively. “Tell you what, Addison and Jackson don’t want to go up, I will.”

“You?”

“Sure, if you give me a boost.”

“Um. . . okay.”

Inigmar and Addison watched with great interest as Nataly and I tried several different tactics for launching her to the next floor. Finally, she said, “Here, if you stand there on the step and grab around my knees, I think I’ll be able to reach the top stair. Once I grab it, you push me up.”

“Uh, sure.”

My face grew quite hot as I lifted Nataly into the air. She didn’t seem to be feeling any embarrassment whatsoever as she called, “I got it!” She planted her feet on my shoulders and pushed off, launching upwards and shoving me backwards onto the floor.

I got up, brushing copious amounts of dust off my jeans. Jackson wandered over from down the hall, and asked, “What did you want, Logan?”

“Nothing, scamp.” I sighed.
Nataly called down, “I found it!”

A minute later she reappeared at the top of the steps, holding an old, leather-bound journal.

“Logan, catch!” she tossed it down, and I caught it, fumbling a bit so that it fell open, revealing a nearly complete diagram of the periodic table.

“You were a chemist?” I exclaimed, looking at Inigmar.

“Indeed.” He inclined his head solemnly.

“Little help?” Nataly asked.

She was sitting on the top stair, her legs dangling over the empty space below. I handed the journal to Jackson and stepped up to the bottom stair, reaching out. Nataly pushed off the stair, and I caught her around the waist. She grabbed my shoulders and I stepped back, setting her back on her feet.

For a second, we both stood there, a little breathless, somewhat pink, and feeling very awkward.

I stepped back, accepting the journal from Jackson.

“We’ll definitely show this to the local museum,” I told Inigmar, “but do you mind if I took a look at it first? This could make it or break it for my test tomorrow.”

“Every scientist is thrilled to be of use to succeeding generations.”

The four of us followed Inigmar back downstairs to the door, now unlocked. As Nataly, Addison, and Jackson stepped out on the porch, Inigmar said,

“Young man, might I have a word?”

“Uh, sure. What is it?”

“Just a bit of advice for you, my friend,” he said with a smile in his eyes. “When there is attraction between atoms, chances are they will get together.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, I expect you’ll decipher it soon enough.” He gave a conspiratorial wink, then slowly faded away.

I frowned, puzzled, but stepped out on to the porch, offering to walk Nataly home.

“Thanks again for helping me find Jackson,” I said when we reached her driveway, “and for getting the journal.”

“No problem,” she smiled. “It was pretty fun.”

“Yeah.”

For the third time that night, we stood there facing each other, neither of us knowing what to say.

“Well. . . I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” Nataly said, starting up the driveway.

“Yeah.” I turned away, about to herd the twins back to our own house when something clicked. “Hey, Nataly!” I called, running halfway up the drive. “Nataly!”

“What is it?”

Without pausing to think (for if I did, I’d chicken out), I asked, “Would you maybe want to catch a movie with me Saturday?”

For a second, she looked stunned. Dang, Logan! I moaned internally, now you’ve done it! She’ll probably never speak to you again!

“I’d love to.”

“Yeah, no, I get it, I just thought –“

“Logan,” she giggled.

“What?” I asked, feeling dumber by the second.

“I said yes.”

“Oh. Um. Great.”

She hesitated a second, a nervous smile playing her lips before stepping towards me and planting a quick kiss on my cheek.

Smiling shyly, she hurried to her door, pausing to wave. Dazedly, I waved back, then reached up to touch my cheek.

She actually said yes.

“Eww, Logan, now you’ve got cooties!” Jackson crowed.

“I think it’s romantic!” Addison declared, elbowing him in the ribs. I blinked, not sure which kid to scold.

Then I laughed, ruffling both twins’ hair.

“Let’s head home.”

THE END