I’m excited to announce the winners of the “worst nightmare” contest. Many thanks to all who entered! It was a really hard decision – there were so many wonderfully creepy/scary/interesting/creative entries – but, in the end, I had to decide. Congratulations to the grand-prize winner, Chantel C. A minor character in the sequel to WELCOME TO THE DARK HOUSE will be named after her (RETURN TO THE DARK HOUSE is slated for a June 2014 release.) Congratulations to the runner-up prize winners: Emie J., Olivia H., and Jolene H. Please check out their winning essays here:
GRAND PRIZE WINNER
BY Chantel Coughlin
My nightmare begins as I am putting my five-year-old brother to bed. He looks up at me with big brown eyes and asks me to tuck his blankets tighter, despite how muggy it is in the house on this hot August night. I do as he asks, giving him a kiss on the forehead, and make my way to the door, turning off the light as I go. Before I can make it back into the hall, he calls me back. He asks me to check his closet – he still believes in the boogeyman. I smile at him, and though I leave the light off, I turn and make my way to his closet, assuring him that there is nothing to be scared of.
As I’m reaching for the knob, he tells me there is a boy hiding in there. I can’t help but laugh a little as I twist the knob and pull the door open a few inches. I hear him gasp in fear, but as the door swings wide to reveal a mess of clothes, board games, and matchbox cars, I don’t see anything out of the ordinary.
I’m about to shut the door when I hear something move in the back of the closet. As I separate the clothes hangers and push aside a heap of stuffed animals to investigate, I find the source of the noise. It’s my brother. He is sitting in the back of the closet. He looks up at me with terror in his eyes and whispers, “There’s a little boy in my bed.”
I gasp and stumble backward, my heart racing a mile a minute, tripping over who knows what, in my attempt to get out of the closet – not taking my eyes off the little boy for a second. How can it be that my brother is both in his bed and in his closet? I reach up, my arm flailing around groping for the pull chain to turn on the closet light. I knock loose more games and toys on the top shelf, but I find it. I pull so hard on the string that it comes off in my hand, but at least the light is on; and now that it is, I can see that this boy in the closet is not my brother. While they look similar, the boy curled up in the corner of the closet looks deformed somehow. The left side of his face is droopy – like someone who has suffered a stroke. The other side of his face has a sinister grin, and it’s terrifying. I begin to scream, still trying to get back into the bedroom, back to my real brother, though I’m tangled in clothes that have fallen off their hangers. The other brother opens his crooked mouth and as a dry laugh escapes his throat, it sounds as though the noise is coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. He lunges at me, and then I wake up.
__________
RUNNER UP WINNERS (in no particular order)
By Olivia Hollar
I’m walking through the woods late at night with the smell of dirt in the air and the sound of dead leaves crunching under my feet on a freshly made trail. After walking for a couple minutes, I hear someone or something behind me. A twig breaks somewhere close by. I hear and feel something following me. I quicken my pace and glance behind me to see if I can determine what is making the noise. I find a bunch of logs covered in moss, against a huge boulder on the side of the trail. Since I’m out of breath and still don’t know if anything is really following me or if it is my imagination, I jump behind the logs, pulling myself up against them as close as I can. With the boulder behind me and the logs in front of me, I feel invisible to anything or anyone coming up the trail. Luckily, in my hiding place, I can make out the pathway by looking through several cracks in the logs.
Suddenly I hear something coming up the trail fast. Then the sound comes to a sudden abrupt stop. I strain my eyes and look down the trail and see what appears to be a person jumping up and down. Every few minutes, he appears to move closer. I can’t make out any features except the eyes, which seem to be looking at me. I know that’s not possible because how could it know I was hiding behind the logs?
Suddenly, it stops moving and starts jumping up and down in place. Normally, that’s not a scary thing to witness, but I’m in the dark, in the woods, and looking at a creature jumping up and down for no reason. There aren’t any creatures in the area that jump in this strange rhythm, so it must be a person but why are they moving that way? I realize I’m holding my breath and slowly exhale. I’m trying to be as quiet as I can. I look around on each side of me to see if anything looks out of place. When I turn around to see where the jumping “thing” is again, it looks closer! I try to make up my mind as to whether or not I should just take off running, but I still can’t tell what I’m seeing and I don’t have any idea if I’ll be chased. I peer out again and strain my eyes, trying to see what appears to be a jumping man. At this point, I’ve decided it is a man and that he is jumping up and down.
The jumping man has stopped moving. Then he suddenly starts sprinting towards me with ethereal speed, reaching out to grab me, and I wake up.
__________
By Jolene Haley
I’m lying on my bed studying for my high school chem class. I need to retain this. It’s going to be on the test.
I feel a tickle on my arm. I don’t pay attention to it at first, but when it persists I look down to see a small black spider crawling on me. My heart speeds up but I react instantly. I raise my hand and slap it, killing it. My heart slows back down.
Ugh, spiders make my skin crawl.
I pick up the dead spider with a Kleenex and toss it in the trash. I turn back to my book.
I feel a tickle on my legs.
I glance back to see several Daddy Longlegs spiders crawling up my flesh. I yelp and fling them off, grabbing a shoe to smoosh them.
What the hell is going on?
I stand there for a moment, my shoe in hand, trying to control my breathing but it doesn’t work. I’m trembling. My skin crawls.
Are there any more on me? I head to the floor length mirror on the back of my door, turning every which way to check my legs and back. I relax. All clear.
I roll my shoulders to release the tension, and sit back down on my bed with a sigh. I try to focus back on my homework, but I can’t. I can’t focus at all because my skin still feels like there’s something crawling on me.
Maybe I should shower. Yes, that might help.
I tuck my hair behind my ear, and a large black spider drops onto my textbook, scurrying across the glossy page.
I scream.
That thing was on my head. It was in my hair. How long has it been on me? I need to get out of my room.
I run to my door and yank the knob. Except my door doesn’t budge. I shake the knob, turning it left to right. It feels locked.
“Come on! Open!”
I turn back around, leaning against my bedroom door. Thousands of spiders are crawling down my walls. A variety of large, small, black, brown, and hairy ones. They’re descending quickly from the walls and the ceiling, coming for me.
I turn back around, shaking the door frantically. My heart’s beating so fast that my chest hurts. I’m crying. I need to get out of here.
I see my refection in the mirror on the back of my door. My eyes are wide. Mascara tears drip down my cheeks. In my reflection, I see that the spiders are only a few feet from me now. It’s only a matter of moments before they’ll cover every inch of my body.
I open my mouth to scream but no sound comes out. Instead, there’s this weird feeling in my throat. It starts as a tickle but then it starts to hurt. I can’t breathe. I open my mouth, gasping for air, as hundreds of tiny black spiders crawl out of my mouth.
Here's to hoping you don't ever find yourself in a similar situation. Wait a second... what's on your arm?
__________
By Emie Johnson
She rolled over sleepily, as her ringtone screamed next to her head. Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack" was NOT the perfect wakeup call and she groggily made a mental note to change it at a less-ungodly hour. The slim, silver cellphone fit perfectly into her palm, but it was all she could do to not throw it at a wall; it wasn't the new iPhone, but it had come free with her two year $19.99 plus tax per-month activation plan and it was all she had in the way of communication. Her eyesight was still too blurry to make out the caller-ID, but the blaring red alarm clock on the bedside table informed her that it was barely three in the morning. With a sigh and a silent prayer that it wasn't a telemarketer, she flipped the phone open.
"Hello?" She asked, the grogginess turned her normally chipper voice into a deep groan.
"Come outside," rasped the gender-less voice on the other end, "come outside and see the world."
"What?" She asked, confused. The only reply was a click, the caller had hung up. She sighed sleepily, and half considered going back to bed. However, her curiosity had been piqued; she padded to the window, and looked out expecting to see the shadowy outline of the 100 year old oak tree in her backyard, the glow of street lamps over the fence, the reflection of the moon bouncing lazily atop the water of the pool, and the twinkling of the stars in the sky.
All she saw was cold, dark, black.
Her eyebrows knit together as she left her room and strode towards the front door. There had to be a rational explanation for the darkness. Perhaps there had been a power outage? She reached for the doorknob with a shaky hand, twisted it, and pulled back. The door opened, and for a moment she was stunned. She could see absolutely nothing, because there was nothing to see. It was as if light itself had been spray-painted black, and her eyes would never adjust. She took a half a step forward out of her home in disbelief.
She fell.
The floor was gone from under her, the doorknob she had just been grasping disappeared from her grip. Her hands searched, clutching at nothing as a soundless scream tore from her chest and the breath was sucked from her lungs as she flew
Down.
Down.
Down.
I sat up gasping, my chest heaved as I struggled to catch my breath. My hand flew to my forehead to catch the head rush, and was met by beads of sweat.
"It was just a nightmare," I whispered to myself, my voice shook, "just a bad dream."
And then the phone rang.