Sweet Necromancy: A Collection of Short Horror Stories

Red Room

"Don't go into the Red Room!" I was always told as a child. Whenever I asked why, my parents would always tell me, "Just listen to us," or, "It's not a room for small children." Of course, this just piqued my curiosity even more. Nobody ever went into that room; my parents always kept it locked and bolted up. I spent my whole childhood being curious about that room, about what they could possibly be hiding in there. Years and years passed by, and my parents still wouldn't open that door. It wasn't until I was in my mid-thirties, when my father suspiciously went "missing," that I decided to visit my mother to try and comfort her. She didn't seem sad at all about her husband being gone, not knowing if he was dead or alive, which I found very strange. Finally, I decided to ask her about the "Red Room" and why they never let me in there. When I asked her, my mother seemed startled at my question. She looked me straight in the eyes, then looked down. "You're not going to believe me, but... that room is cursed.." My eyes widened. "Cursed?" I asked. "Is there even such a thing as curses?" "Yes, there definitely is," my mother answered sharply. She took a deep breath and explained to me that when my father was a small child, he had an infant brother that was in perfect health. However, his father had apparently upset a very strange woman, one that you could perhaps call a witch, when she came knocking on his door one dark night, asking for money. Of course, my grandfather just thought she was some drug addict, and slammed the door right in her face. Later that night, my grandfather woke up to a strange murmuring sound coming from the baby's room. My grandfather immediately stormed into the room, only to see a silhouette quickly run away from the window. He ran over to the window to see if he could catch them, but no one was there. He then checked the baby, who seemed perfectly fine. However, the next morning, as my grandmother went to get the baby up, he... was dead. There were no signs of foul play, so they couldn't say anyone killed him. Ever since then, my grandfather kept that room bolted up, never to be opened again, and fell into a deep depression, blaming himself for his son's death. My grandfather was never the same since then. He'd tell my father the same thing my parents always told me: "Don't go into the Red Room!" He kept it a secret from my father until he was of age, when he told him to never sell the house, and always keep that room locked, to which my father agreed. They called it the "Red Room" because red usually means "stop" or a warning of danger. As for my father missing, well, my mother claims to not know what happened, but she says that she just woke up one morning and saw that the door to the "Red Room" was somehow open, and there, is where she found my father dead on the floor of the "Red Room." She suddenly broke down crying, telling me that she couldn't have possibly gone to the police because no one would believe her, so she did what she felt she had to do, which was take my father's dead body and bury it in the backyard. Once she told me that, I shivered as I slowly turned to look at the backyard. She knew she had no other choice but to report him as "Missing." "What was I going to tell them?" she said frantically, "That we have a cursed room, that my husband was just sleepwalking, somehow unbolted the door, and died in there? Not only would they not believe me, they'd think I'm crazy, lock me up in a looney bin!" I sat next to her and rubbed her back to comfort her as she sobbed. "You believe me, don't you?" she asked me as she looked up into my eyes with her own puffy, red ones. "O-Of course I do," I answered nervously. I was still trying to take all of this in, and of course I didn't believe that my mom killed my dad. Why would she?