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Our second place High School winning entry was written by Demilade Adeoti who attends the Union High School in Vauxhall, New Jersey. |
“She hasn’t come out.”
“She’s just taking her time, she wants us to come in -- then she’ll scare us back.”
Linny wrapped her arms over her chest impatiently, habitually rubbing her dirty Converse shoes into the gravel of the sidewalk. Beside her stood Charles, the twin brother of her friend, who seemed to share her animosity towards the situation. The chill of the frosty wind had no mercy blowing against their paper-thin jackets, urging them to leave.
Charles sighed, “I don’t care if she wants to scare us, I’m going in just to get out of this cold.”
Linny rolled her eyes, “I’ll do the same. We’ll just get her back if she does anything another day.”
The dark-haired boy took the first steps forward, towards the towering and broken down house that stood in front of them. Before moving onto the property she hesitated, years of warnings and bad omens had stopped her body from getting any closer to the source. However, she ignored the alerts going off in her mind and defiantly matched Charles’ pace to the house’s porch.
Characteristically of a haunted mansion, the grass was limp and dying. Scratchy straw from the pond’s reeds were scattered on the ground and the flaky, dull purple paint on the wooden walls used to be inviting but now just seemed to bring melancholy thoughts. Broken pot shards laid in the back where the long-neglected flower garden slumped brown and withered. The coming of dusk only enhanced the experience. Silence would have been more comforting than the sound of the hearty wind’s blow which threatened to collapse the structure at any moment. It bode danger, but that had been the Down-Under since she was 12.
Even hard-headed Charles seemed to flinch before touching the handle of the rickety door that led to the depths of the terrible stories this house had arisen in their childhood. Linny reached over his hand and opened the door, haphazardly teasing him with a smile at his carefulness. There they entered and began calling Olivia’s name and searching different rooms. Trying to be as quiet as possible on the squeaky floorboards, Linny peeked in several rooms trying to scare Olivia first if she was, in fact, attempting to scare them, but after several minutes had passed she gave up on this strategy and began curiously checking dresser drawers and bedsheets.
Ms. Meller had owned this house on her street before her death five years ago. Her body had been found in the basement which is why her home earned the name “Down Under”. The police had assumed her death to be from shock from her new cat, Pepper, because she was found with claw marks on her arms and face but rumours around school called it an unfortunate allergy reaction since it was more plausible than a killer cat. The zealous storytellers of the block had renamed the cat from Pepper to Keeper because many that passed by the house could hear its yowls. Apparently, Keeper was the one who kept on the property for half a decade later, waiting for another victim to enter as they had been told.
Linny had followed the rules of her peers and parents, but as time dwindled down for her time in this quiet town, she wanted to leave for college with a bang. Daring Olivia to spend two minutes in the house in a half thought out bet, she and Charles were going to spook her once she came out on the porch and then through laughs she would take a picture with her closest friends. However, Olivia was setting her time-table off track with her fifteen minute stay.
After sifting through doilies, and sliding her fingers across bumby wooden lamps she called out Charles’ name.
“I can’t find her, have you seen her yet?” She questioned, rubbing her arms feeling bits of cold escape inside through slight cracks.
She twirled around taking in the eeriness of the room and then twiddled her thumbs feeling the need to talk to someone to ease her feeling of uneasiness. No answer came however, and she was going to call him again when she noticed something gray and bushy sticking out from under the drawer she had inspected. Bending down she silently brought her hand to touch the possible fur boa. Her legs toppled however, and she fell into the side of the drawer headfirst, causing it to fall forward and shatter into splinters on the ground.
The sound was earth-shattering in the silent house and the shaking of the already fragile foundation had caused a ceiling tile above her to fall loose. She stood up quickly but dazed and shocked she stood still for a moment too long. The tile fell and with it, bodies of dead mice rained down on her arms and head. Screaming, Linny backed away, furiously getting the excess ooze from the mice off her body and hyperventilating on the bed of late Ms. Meller.
“Charles!” She cried once again, shaken and frigid seeing the glassy-eyes dead creatures on the ground.
Once again there was no answer and she forced her body to leave the safety of the bed to get to the door. Carefully she avoided the dark animals, small and scratched open with dried grayish blood soaking their fur. She forced herself to look away and went toward the exit as quickly as possible. As she moved, her eyes trailed where she had found the fluffy fur before but as soon as it came into view another wave of goosebumps erupted on her skin. It wasn’t a feather boa that had been under the dresser, but the sunken corpse of a black cat. The sunken corpse of Pepper.
“T-then…” She muttered shaken to her core, “If Pepper’s dead then who is the cat that calls when we pass by?”
Linny dashed out of the room in a desperate sprint, hoping to get out of the house as soon as possible but as she turned the corner she was faced with the largest body she had ever seen.
It was the backside of a giant cat, whose fur was so brilliant it could blind her and she could barely fathom the colors she was seeing. Was it a golden yellow and splattered with royal purple? No, maybe it was vibrant blue and a soul-shaking orange? Her eyes glowed with each pulse of her heartbeat. The wispy magical pale aura latching around the beast exclaimed that she was witnessing something supernatural. Except, reality was shot back into her when it turned around and it's deep, entrancing, red eyes focused on her and bloody Olivia was found in its grinning mouth.
Caught in it’s foreboding eyes, she found that she was frozen. Its evil and malice pierced her body and nothing could be felt in the moment they locked eyes. However, the latent fear finally manifested and jolted through her body. Within a second she had seen him, her legs led her to slide behind a counter from the room she just left. The behemoth cat had surely seen her, but it stood, still with wide eyes and a grinning mouth focused on something else. Breathing heavily, she watched him stare down it and turned to see his target. To her horrification it was Charles standing out in the hallway she was just in, who was caught in its eyes and with the most terrifying expression painted on his face.
She broke out in cold sweats, begging and pleading for him to run and hide in her head but his legs were shaking. He was petrified by the extremely palpable taste of death weighing down the air.
In a moment, the beginning of a scream was starting to leave his mouth but in that same half second the cat had crossed the full hallway separating them faster than any of them could comprehend and had him trapped under his paw, suffocating the boy she knew. The cat then dragged him playfully into another room, and his yowl bellowed through the walls of the house like a baritone trumpet as he got further away. As soon as it was out of sight Linny dashed out going down the stairs she had climbed, all the way to the front where the exit would be, but saw his tail blocking the door.
With his fast steps the apparition had turned around with its chilling smile and fresh blood deeply seated into his paw. Faster than she’d ever been before she took off through the corridor she just came down from. With every second that passed the sound of his heavy body came closer. Louder and louder until she was sure that he was right behind her, the sound of her heart closely matching the pounding of her feet on the ground. She opened the closest door to her side, shut, and locked it seeing his face ever so close before the door’s closing made it vanish.
Hearing his silence, she ran with tears in her eyes further down the stairs and into a sub-compartment of the room she was in which turned out to be for laundry. She squished herself behind the washing machine and the freezing floor clutching her jacket pale. She was stuck in the basement, stuck in the depths of the Down-Under. Although she heard no sounds, she could tell that if she even attempted to look to the side his face would surely be there looking back at her. She knew that if she turned she would soon join the dead mice in the ceiling.
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